We’ll Send You A Prize If You Help Us Out By Sending A Car-Tip That Becomes A Viral Article

Ruin finds you, even if you don’t take the low road. I’ve seen it happen to too many good, responsible, and otherwise industrious and conscientious people. It has been my observation that in this “society”, economic privilege and connections to such privilege matters most when it comes to success, not hard work, intellect, creativity, or any of the identity politics traits of race/gender/sexuality(white privilege only exists for white people who come from privilege, which I’ll admit, I had SOME, but not enough to make a difference for the better in my life). I missed many opportunities that I knew would have made me a millionaire in short order, for lack of start-up capital to pursue them at the time. I’m in a much better place now and on the lookout for opportunities, but they aren’t as obvious as the ones I saw 20 years ago. Things are much more weird today, than they probably have ever been, which represents a lot of opportunity for massive gains, but it’s also a high risk gamble to anyone without connections/insider knowledge.

Things are currently the way they are because the moneyed and self-anointed “masters of the universe” want things to be this way. They especially hate competition from people smarter and more creative than themselves. And it’s a total crapsack world for your average Joe and Jane Sixpack today. They have no chance. This is even reflected in the cars that are available for purchase, the vast majority of which are disposable commodities designed to eat away the contents of your wallet.

Strange times we are living in.

You don’t have to eat it. It eats you.

I’m fortunate that I managed to avoid being swallowed, and I’m optimistic that I won’t end up back in that position for the foreseeable future. But I had many close calls. There’s 200+ million Americans that are truly hurting right now with no hope and no future that aren’t going to thrive no matter what they do. Losers are built into the system. For many, their vehicles are a net drain, but simultaneously required to participate in society. Not everyone can do what I did to avoid those expenses.

The laws are currently written in a way that if you are born on or near the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy and follow them, you generally will not get ahead, because you’ll never have the money to do what is needed to advance. For a person born into this situation, “outsmarting” their inferiors means figuring out ways to make more money than one could working a normal job, using methods that may not be legal, and not getting caught in the process. In which case, favorable circumstance(luck) matters more than intelligence. There are a lot of intelligent people in prison, and not solely because of their own screw ups, many of them there who have harmed no one but are there because the state claims itself the “victim”.

IQ is certainly a flawed measure. I only used it as a reference. Consider how stupid the average American is, then consider that half the population is even less intelligent. Then consider that the average American is being ruled over by their inferiors within the political class, inferiors who got the requisite head start to get there because of Daddy’s money.

You can’t outsmart violence or the threat thereof directed at you to force compliance with the laws written by the corporations who have bribed the political class to pass them, when such violence or the threat thereof comes your way. It’s do what you’re told, or men with guns will come to take your stuff and lock you in a cage, and kill you if you refuse to cooperate. And you have an “impartial” court system that will overwhelmingly side with them, and penalize you further with contempt if you question its supposed “impartiality”.

I think John B. Calhoun’s “Mouse Utopia” is a more accurate reflection of what is actually going on in the current society on the macro scale. Except the mice didn’t have to deal with an aristocracy of parasites gatekeeping everything they needed to live and maximizing the value extracted from their labor on top of it. The mice didn’t have to work themselves out of a living an actual life, go into crippling debt for the “privilege” of advancing themselves, and put any and all dreams on hold indefinitely just to meet the lower two rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy.

There once was a time where humans could provide for themselves the basics needed for sustenance with their own two hands, without permits and inspections required, and all of the fees, taxes, insurance, and middlemen grifters that come with it. They used to be able to build a home with a few days/weeks/months worth of work. It may not have had any of the bells and whistles modern homes have, but the human didn’t have to spend 30 years of their life working for someone else to pay it off with generous interest payments to the ruling class made along the way, either, assuming they are lucky enough to have the money to be able to “buy” and not endlessly rent. And don’t get me started on property taxes. You’re not even allowed to live in the woods or even the desert for free anymore(although that doesn’t stop people from trying, eg. Slab City).

Having been intimately involved in the reconstruction of a house and having seen the cost saving measures taken on others I am a firm conceptual believer in building codes and permits. Conceptual in that I see the value in them when they are used properly. I’ve seen too many dangerous “shortcuts” taken even by people who should have known better. Conceptual in that permits and codes can also be weaponized by fearmongering NIMBYS and profit seekers.

NIMBYS. That’s the thing. I’ve looked at some rural land, far from the nearest town, for cheap. The problem is, the $20,000-50,000-ish plots of land I can currently comfortably buy outright will require me to spend $250,000+ to be allowed to live on it(and constantly increasing with inflation). It’s now common to see minimum square footage requirements of 2,000+ on a concrete foundation, hookups to municipal water/sewer/gas and power grid all at your own expense, no solar panels or DIY wind turbines allowed, plus HOA fees, when your nearest neighbors are half a mile away.

There’s no valid reason for this crap. This is abuse of the law. And it’s almost everywhere. I don’t need or want a damned McMansion.

I’d be content to live in a tent, bicycle camper, or RV while building a permanent 600-ish square foot home similar to the slightly larger one I grew up in, except instead of having bills, there’d be off-grid solar, a well for water, composting toilet and/or outhouse, and keep my bills down so that I might be able to retire in my 40s and finally pursue what I’m passionate about, but increasingly a modest form of living isn’t allowed. No one would be making money off of me. I’d have almost no bills and my property taxes would be so low I wouldn’t need a job.

But the NIMBYS want to force you to build a McMansion to keep their property values high, or get herded into a ghetto somewhere so they can’t see you, or rent from them so they get a bigger pile of money to die on, or do without shelter altogether(and get endlessly punished or harassed for it as if it’s a moral failing to be poor).

I learned my lesson with student loans and I’m sick of debt. I paid multiples in interest the original principal taken out. Never again.

The law as it is currently written in most places is about maximizing extraction of your hard-earned money and diverting it to well-connected people and corporations. That is why most Americans are in debt and struggling check to check, while the rich keep getting ever richer. Not everyone living beyond their means is doing so willingly. They’re being forced to, under color of law. And they’re being crushed under an economic model and taxation model that demands endless growth, on a planet of finite natural resources. This paradigm is currently propped up by debt, but mathematically, it cannot last forever.

Which is why I brought up the mouse utopia in another post. Younger people aren’t having kids because all of these damned rules are one of the factors making it unbearably expensive. It’s bad enough that single well-off people are struggling, even when they’re minimalists. But people that need reliable cars, and a roof over their head near their job, are increasingly being priced out of it altogether, no matter how many hours they work. So they sign on that dotted line… as paying these things in full would take a literal lifetime of saving. And in the meantime, they hope and pray they never experience a layoff or a medical event.

There are plenty of people doing just that in the SFBA. If there is a street big enough for a RV there is usually a clapped out RV ensconced on it, sometimes with a pile of filled black tank honey buckets awaiting disposal. There are also plenty of tents along the creeks and walking paths as well as piles of garbage. There is no garbage service for folks who don’t pay for it. Responsibility for removal of that RV and tent city garbage is passed onto taxpayers:

Those people are literally given no other options, besides the street or camping out in a bando(been there, done that). You may be surprised at the number of them which are employed in what are considered good paying jobs. I know a teacher in Seattle who rents an RV parked on the street, because his salary still prices him out of a basic apartment once the student loans are garnished from his check. He has no running water, and no functioning shower or toilet. Just electricity, which he runs a generator to provide via a battery bank. He does have a 2001 Toyota Corolla at least, but the expense of insurance alone has him contemplating getting rid of it(do consider how much of that insurance he is paying is going to profit margin, just to further enrich a few C-Suite assholes that have bought the insurance laws). He’s hoping to have the student loans paid off in 5 years, living like this. Then maybe in another 10 he’ll have a down payment for a house, although this probably isn’t a sustainable plan, and if he manages to pull it off he’ll be in his 60s by then. The “reward” for a life of endless toil.