-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Harka wrote:

Do you really expect single mothers with 3 kids to have the time to do it to the degree of being able to _freely choose_ their employers?? Or even Joe Average, who just came out of College and has $100 000 school-loan-debt?

Certainly there are people who will give up their privacy rights for money. Some of them will not perceive it as a problem. Some will have put themselves into a bad situation where the money is worth more than their privacy. In almost all cases their problems do not exist outside their minds. The mother with 3 children did not get into that situation by accident. Certain choices and actions were taken that put her into that "bad" situation. ("Bad" in quotes because if one really really wants to have children, the situation may be preferable to the alternative.) The kid who borrows $100,000 and can't find a good job did not receive good advice. It is terribly important to recognize when people are in situations of their own creation if we wish to advise people in ways to avoid such situations or avoid them ourselves.

While I am glad for your achievements, you have not addressed my point: all this doesn't apply to the larger mass of people.

I completely disagree with this. Read "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. This book describes a method which anybody can use to make good decisions in managing their life. The purpose of the book is to teach ordinary people how to become independently wealthy. There are few people who would not benefit from this method and who are incapable of applying it.

You were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time...one of the founding-members of a company in an industry, that pays way more than average and thus brought you into the position, that you're in now. Great...more power to you and I encourage everybody to try the same.

You should also look at "The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. This is a study of millionaires in the United States. To quote from "Money" magazine: "To learn what today's millionaires have in common and how they accumulated their wealth, Stanley and Danko sent questionnaires to affluent Americans and conducted focus-group interviews. They learned that about two-thirds of those millionaires who still work are self-employed - versus one in ten for all Americans. The types of businesses they own tend to be mundane, such as welding and dry cleaning. The overwhelming majority aren't trust-fund babies; eight out of ten accumulated their riches themselves. Most are extremely frugal. Although their average net worth is $3.7 million, they generally live so modestly that even their neighbors don't have a clue about their wealth." The article has these five bullet points to recommend: "1. Live below your means. 2. Launch a savings and investing plan. 3. Take on debt sparingly. 4. Pay as little as possible to Uncle Sam. 5. Start your own business." Standard Ben Franklin stuff, but it works.

But if the available work-force exceeds the demand for it, such jobs wouldn't pay nearly as much as they do right now. Hence, achieving financial independence to the point of freely choosing employers would become much harder again.

Actually, it doesn't cost much to change employers. All you have to do is find an employer who will hire you. Mostly this is a question of time and effort.

But this is the reality for MOST people (outside of the elite-industries) already! Especially if they start out with student-loan-debts amounting to several ten thousands of dollars. Add a family/kids to that and you tell me how easy a task it will be to quickly become independently wealthy. (Some people will be able to pull it off somehow, most people won't - - despite their wishes to the contrary. Should they make their best effort? Absolutely! Will everybody succeed? Absolutely not.)

I agree most people will probably not pull it off, but that's too bad. The reason they won't pull it off is that they won't make their best effort. Sure, you can dig up people who appear to have really tried and then failed anyway, but they are rare. You can easily see that most poor people are not making their best effort by studying how much money they spend on alcohol, tobacco, or other recreational substances. You can also study TV watching habits. Poor people watch a lot of TV instead of making themselves useful.

The truth is, that there are many people outside of Cypherpunks, who get barely through life _despite_ making efforts. They may get enough salary in their 9-5 job to maintain themselves to a degree, but not nearly enough to have the complete freedom, that is the issue here. And to say, "they get what they deserve" (if they don't have the abundance of dollars/freedom) is rather narrowminded and out-of-touch with most people's reality.

Gee, I don't know about that. When I was in school there was tremendous peer pressure to not study, to not get good grades, to not program, to not study electronics, to not master calculus, etc. etc. etc. If those people end up poor, I have no hesitation in saying they deserve it - at the very least!

That may indeed work for some people, but the argument of "self-discipline and sacrifice" usually goes overboard once people _other than yourself_ are severely affected by that. "Sorry hun, you can't have a new winter-coat. Mommy has to save enough money so that she can choose the people she works for. And no...no christmas this year either".

I think I hear violins! ;-) In practice, these are very seldom the choices that are being made. Winter coats are available second hand for almost nothing. When I was a kid my parents made many of our presents by hand to save money. Christmas need not be expensive, and it's not clear that it is improved in any meaningful way by spending lots of money. People are perfectly capable of living economically and making good decisions, even when their children are involved. (In> is Tim May, quoted by Harka.)

In> If they won't make these spending tradeoffs and have not even a In> buffer sufficient to carry them through a month or two or three, In> I say screw them.

How about you adopting a person/family of your choice instead and providing them with enough startup-money, so that they can at least make an realistic effort to work towards a position of becoming financially independent themselves? :)

Uh, excuse me, but I didn't see Tim volunteering for Santa Claus duty. Why should he help out people who will, in all probability, fail to take his advice, squander any money he gives them, and resent him for his efforts? For that matter, why should he help out people who will be eternally grateful if he doesn't value that gratitude? And the claim that all that is needed is a little startup money is a standard lame excuse that has probably been used for millenia. Making excuses is not how the job gets done.

I suggest in return you reconsidering the myth, that a free market means equal opportunities and thus quick self-reliance for everybody.

The term "equal opportunities" is a curious one. A free market does mean that everybody has the equal opportunity to make agreements with each other. But, clearly some people will have more success making these agreements for reasons which are not under their control. Somebody might have parents who introduce them to the right people and show them the ropes, for instance. This is one reason why the free market does not eliminate the formation of elites. But, so what? Are we really going to claim that people shouldn't help their children to succeed? In the sense that I think you mean the term, "equal opportunities" are exceedingly undesirable. Monty Cantsin Editor in Chief Smile Magazine http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.htm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNFIxl5aWtjSmRH/5AQFjQAf9GlFXsJQ1Iyii7Ch26a38Xi80Q1QMcbq4 rJPVzncFntQjfau99j6jUiNdsjk2Zr8XhLZtyP95yQX3VcaAmsyY7imXImWyH1uU r2OezEg5S9+e/mi7knTsOfzlYOBhKklMTprKo2K539g05B9xJCOqb8S9CyX9/Ie6 5ZH2gss2jANWM6cWsCmZ0nRtG3Rc1fKXJDl5DgsdceCzkVRGms6r7WMzvwUxTTFC wlaWUwjyUcnEK+cqnvsq4rBW/Bh4dvCwzUnEHbyckukO5wOsYxDFb9kuWaIufMJh ukvif/SP9SGzLsqpJ/Iv2pqdRL7B/C4DP+gFP1iODkaER0a7/wUR9A== =9Kt3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----