Here’s a silly little video that I made:

The point? The hope is that truly intelligent species wouldn’t wish to lord over us, but engage in trade and commerce with us.

Where do I think that puts us? I think human beings have potential, but we don’t have that kind of society yet.

The following is a letter I have composed but not yet sent to my former band director from high school. Just so everybody is aware, I went to a private Christian high school.

I have to confess that I’m not quite sure why I’m writing this or what I hope to achieve by this letter. That’s part of why I am posting it here. I think that this man is fairly reasonable, but I’m not really sure how to sound that out before telling him these very personal things. It’s not like he and I are all that close… but at the same time, I want him to understand that telling me to find a “‘good’ church” isn’t the sort of thing I want to hear. I suppose I could just ignore it all the same… or I could just respond with, “I’m an atheist, stop bugging me,” but my experience with some people in the past has told me that ignoring it or giving curt replies only seems to encourage them.

I think that he is otherwise reasonable. He’s pretty sharp, too. Perhaps I’m looking for a challenge, as well? At this very moment, I really don’t know… which, again, is why I’m posting it here instead of sending it out right away.

Oh, and he asked about the FSP because I had mentioned it offhand earlier, hence the note near the bottom, and the reference to Walden.

---

Letter to Mr. D

---

  It's funny how things change over time.  It's only been ten years since I
graduated Eastern Christian High School, but I'd be hard-pressed to identify
myself with the same terminology then as now.

  That's just the way life goes, I suppose.  People don't change often, and
when they do, they change slowly.  Rarely does a person's core personality
change, and overnight conversions are rarely more than skin-deep.

  I have undergone a number of changes since high school, especially over the
past four years.  While some things are still in flux (either they're too
important or too unimportant to nail down), there have been a few areas of my
life which have settled to a fair degree.

  One of the things I have kept in mind over the past several years is to rid
myself of hypocrisy... to rid my mind of contradictions.  I wish to ensure
that I am under no delusions and that I see reality for reality, and fakery
for fakery.

  Reality is a sopping, bloody mess.  It also includes nigh-inexpressible
beauty and grandeur.  Any delusions that stand in the way ultimately
disconnect me from the world around me.

  What I have discovered is that I cannot trust the mere words of other
individuals.  I cannot trust a man who says he has the word of God.  I have
ceased to be convinced of God's existence.  To wit, I am an atheist.

  Prior to my deconversion, my greatest hope was to go to heaven.  Hence, I
spent a lot of time watching my life circle the drain.  I was so miserable
here, and the promise so great, that I very nearly took my own life.

  Yet doubt kept me bound to this reality.  I wasn't certain of heaven.  I
wasn't sure that I'd still be around if my current life slipped away.  I had
absolutely no guarantee that I could brick it and still have existence.

  Life hasn't been easy since that time.  But life wasn't easy before it,
either.  Since that time, I have had multiple attacks of misery, and I've had
to go most of them entirely alone.  But the difference now is that I have
something to live for.

  It is nothing external to me.  It's not my girlfriend, my job, my
possessions, or even my cat.  What I have to live for is myself.  I can derive
no greater hope for my life than that which springs forth from the observation
of daily beauty, the satisfaction of production, and the camaraderie of
friends.

  I am telling you these things out of respect for you as an individual, and
as a friend.  I hold out no hope or desire to change your mind on these
matters on a personal basis.  What you believe about reality and existence is
entirely your own business and nobody else's.  I chose to share mine with you
because I presently believe that, if you don't understand my decision, you
will at least respect it.

  Insofar as the Free State Project goes, it is meant to be a vehicle for
politically-active individuals looking to reduce the involvement of government
in private life.  New Hampshire is their chosen starting ground.  I came here
initially because I thought I might be able to contribute, but I was mistaken
with regards to the political activity that would have been expected of its
members.  I don't think that the FSP will ultimately succeed in promoting
freedom, not as I understand it.  It will, at best, replace the current
leaders with their own set of leaders, which is going to accomplish nothing in
the long run.

  There is much more to say here, but I shall leave it for another time.
Interestingly enough, I am far closer to Walden than you may have realized
when you first wrote.

Watching videos of skeptics on youtube and then moving on to Derren Brown’s multiple mindfucks reminded me of my experience with Primerica a number of years ago.

I had been looking for a job, so it must have been 2003 or 2004 or something. I guess I must have been getting desperate, because I responded to a ad for sales-types.

I had spoken on the phone with this one guy who screened me, and I guess I met the criteria (whatever it was). I was asked to attend a meeting with a follow-up interview, I think.

The meeting was much less informational than I would have liked and was far more “sales pitch.” I felt incredibly uncomfortable at one point when slogans were being bandied about at the head of the room and the “audience” responded as a church congregation.

The guy who spoke with me on the phone was too busy to see me at that very moment and, as I was feeling uncomfortable, I left. I had managed to talk to some other guy, who I told that I wasn’t interested any longer.

I did some more research on the particular job offering, and it seemed like there was a much greater emphasis on recruitment than on selling product. Whether or not this was true, the fact that sales reps are encouraged to do any recruitment was somewhat troubling to me, especially given what I knew of pyramid schemes that operated in the same fashion.

Shortly thereafter, the guy who I spoke with initially called me up. I told him that I wasn’t interested, and he pressed me on it. I told him that I had done a little research and was unimpressed with Primerica and had concerns that it resembled a pyramid scheme. He started to get angry, basically telling me that I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about because I had never been a part of Primerica, or something like that. (This is far from verbatim, but that’s the sentiment that I picked up.)

He kept giving me the hard sell for the “job,” at which point I thought things were more than a little weird. I hardly thought I was especially qualified for the job, and I felt I was being treated as a means to an end (which, if recruitment was the main focus of a sales position, is a rather accurate read of the situation).

What also made me feel uncomfortable was the request to turn over the contact information of 10 or so people that you knew. Not only was this about recruitment, this was also about farming for contacts. I wouldn’t be able to profit at all from selling to those initial ten people, either, if I remember correctly.

Aside from all of this, there was some sort of certification requirement was was apparently legally necessary, but I didn’t have the cash to outlay, nor was I willing to attend some sort of class to achieve this document. That, combined with the necessity to basically dime on my friends and family (thus subjecting them to hard-sell pitches, ensuring a severe blow to my trustworthiness) made me say, “It’s better being unemployed.”

So, recently, I took off the restriction on Trillian that blocks all messages from people not on my buddy list. I figured that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea and since I haven’t been thus far inundated with spam, so far, so good, right?

Since then, I’ve had two people message me that I did not recognize. It seemed likely that the first was a brief conversation that happened years ago. The name seemed familiar, and after a little digging, I found out who it was. I haven’t heard from that person since. Go figure.

Today, I get contacted by “SpeedRaceXR,” inciting this exchange (pulled from the trillian log):

Session Start (newjoiseyboy:SpeedRaceXR): Wed May 16 17:49:31 2007
[17:49] SpeedRaceXR: hey
[17:49] me: hi.
[17:50] SpeedRaceXR: who r u, ur on my list
[17:50] me: I don't know. Who are you?
[17:50] SpeedRaceXR:  fuck it
[17:50] me: thanks!
Session Close (SpeedRaceXR): Wed May 16 17:50:21 2007

Session Start (newjoiseyboy:SpeedRaceXR): Wed May 16 17:50:28 2007
[17:50] SpeedRaceXR: jerkoff
[17:50] me: you're the one who messaged me, pal.
[17:50] me: have a nice day!
Session Close (SpeedRaceXR): Wed May 16 17:50:59 2007

Session Start (newjoiseyboy:SpeedRaceXR): Wed May 16 17:51:13 2007
[17:51] SpeedRaceXR:  yea i might, it stoppd raining

Now, is it just me, or is SpeedRaceXR a total jackoff? Sure, I didn’t exactly respond in a “normal” fashion, but, what, is he simply too busy to waste his time on people he doesn’t know?

Given that I didn’t recognize him at all, he probably added me to his buddy list ages ago and and has since forgotten why. Setting aside why anybody would deign to speak with me, this guy is just a crackhead.

A google search doesn’t turn up much on him, either. Oh well, nothing to worry about, time to move on.

It’s kind of funny that the first posting in my “non-personal” journal is something that fits into both categories. However, I can still, at least, try to separate my comments into “non-personal” and “personal” ones.

So, in eques, I’ve posted some broader Thoughts on the Free State Project. In a nutshell, I’m strongly considering removing my signature from the Free State Project (FSP)‘s Statement of Intent (SOI).

The significance of such a move is not all that great. After all, my name is only one out of a few thousand, and their “mission” can certainly be carried out without my name being part of the body count. However, it is about my integrity, and about what I believe is right.

I admit that I was somewhat hasty in signing up–it is clear to me now that I did so without fully thinking it through. In my defense, however, much of my present disagreement grew from a few doubts I had in the beginning that I considered to be insignificant at the time. That is to say, the doubts I had I either ignored or read a response to them. The doubt regarding political involvement in particular was definitely there, but I was “assured” by the comments of others that political action was not necessary.

(I will say that, strictly speaking, political action isn’t necessary. I think that the 20,000 activists figure has a decent amount of wiggle-room to allow for those who would sign up and be strictly apolitical. However, it would not be appropriate to say that the organization is not political in nature.)

I joined the FSP because something resonated in what I read. However, a degree of resonance does not mean that everything included in the package is appropriate. To use the classically extreme example, Nazism doubtless resonated with enough Germans on some level to gain strength, and we can observe the massive devastation that ensued.

I don’t want to control other people. Every time I’ve felt the desire to go into politics somehow, I’ve stopped myself before I began, either because there appeared to be no principled politicians, or because there seemed to be no way a principled individual could succeed. I now know that it doesn’t matter how principled the individual is, because the system itself is flawed. For the small amount of good said individual might produce, much, much more evil is perpetrated.

One thing that bothered me briefly regarding my removal of my signature from the SOI was the potential of losing social relationships that I gained by joining the FSP. But that didn’t bother me for very long, because I’ve already been down a very similar road when I disclaimed Christianity. I’ve had more than a few people essentially turn their backs on me because I could no longer honestly consider myself a Christian. If I can handle the sort of hypocrisy that enables an individual who has been my “friend” for years to turn their back on me, I can certainly handle that sort of behavior from people I’ve only known for a few months at most.

I will say that I am very sorry for using the FSP as a vehicle to get people to help me in my time of need. Even if I had good intentions at the time, the fact remains that I did use this association far more for my personal benefit than for theirs. I’m not sure that my manipulations have been all that minimal, either. Sure, I had people help me move in, and I rewarded them with pizza. My landlord also gave me quite a few breaks and we’re just now catching up. But those are minimal in comparison to using the FSP for social satisfaction. I am very decidedly not interested in politics and attended the regional meetings largely to fill my own social needs.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, but I just feel that what I did was wrong. The only thing I can really do from this point on is to not do that anymore. I should also be up-front with people about my withdrawal from the FSP, whether officially or otherwise. Then, if any damage has been done, we can proceed from there.

My guess is that not a whole lot of damage has been done, as I didn’t really keep very many secrets as to my doubts from the beginning. But there was still that one veneer, that one mask that I never removed until now.

So, any of you who still feel that the FSP has merit, good for you. I think you’re wrong, but what else can I say?

From: Political Calculations: Data for the Slaves of Wages

Our final chart for this post shows the distribution by age of the portion of the U.S. workforce that earns less than or equal to the current U.S. minimum wage of $5.15 per hours:

Pretty startling, eh? This chart confirms that the minimum wage is primarily earned by the very young. We find that 26.1% are between the ages of 16 and 19, and if we go up to age 25, we find that 53.3% of the people earning minimum wage or less fall into this group. If we add the 12.2% of the minimum wage earning workforce who are between 25 and 29 years old to this latter value, we discover that nearly two-thirds (65.5%) of the so-called minimum wage workforce is under the age of 30.

By contrast, at the old end of the age distribution, there were just 4.7% minimum-wage earning workforce members above the age of 60. Minimum wage earning would seem to mostly be a phase for the young!

I have to wonder what assumptions this blog author has about low wages that this data startles him. The fact that young people overwhelmingly earn very low wages is a direct result of the fact that they haven’t very many skills to begin with.

One may think that to help increase the welfare of young people, one ought to raise the federal minimum wage. But this is a bad move, for a number of reasons. First, the demand for low wage earners is not perfectly inelastic. If a store owner employs 6 minimum wage workers and his costs suddenly increase by 16% (as might occur if the minimum wage is raised by $0.50/hr at the current rate of $5.15/hr, taking into consideration that an increased payroll will increase the taxes required), that store owner may well reduce the hours of his workers by the same amount or end up laying one off.

Second, increasing the minimum wage creates a greater incentive for employers to hire “illegally.” The notion that there are “legal” and “illegal” ways to hire people is pretty absurd on its face, but that said, if the cost of keeping your employees just jumped by 16%, perhaps you will hire somebody “under the table.” It’s a lot cheaper to pay somebody $7/hr on the side than it is to hire them for the same position at minimum wage.

If there were no minimum wage, that wouldn’t mean that employers could pay “whatever they want,” not exactly. The set of people willing to work for $1.00/hr, say, is probably consisted mostly of people who aren’t worth very much in terms of their skills, trustworthiness, etc. The existence of a minimum wage, however, ensures that they will probably never get any “legal” employment. Furthermore, the fact that we don’t all earn minimum wage is evidence that government intervention in the price of labor is unnecessary.