mweiss

Oh dear... every time I see one of these situations, it really upsets me. Especially knowing that I could be in this situation in the next month or so. It's too bad he's using the sort of "legal" arguments that got Irwin Schiff put away for 43 years last year. Qwertz has it exactly right. The courts will rule based on accepted law, not on morality. So everything is a "kangaroo court" and the conscientious objector cannot get a fair trial. But then, this nation's tax system would collapse overnight if the courts ever let a tax protestor prevail.

Thales, it’s nice to know there is another electronics-minded person here on OOL. I could talk about this stuff for hours on end. In fact, put me in a room full of sound engineers and subwoofers and amps, and I’m in heaven. (Too bad I missed the big ProSoundWeb “subwoofer shootout” at Club Rebel in Manhattan this past week—from the pictures, I can see they had a lot of fun, and the Bassmaxx woofers were so far ahead of any of the competition that a noise complaint was made from a 5th floor apartment ACROSS the street. That’s incredible. I love bass like that. ) I have run a repair shop for a few years back in the mid 1970s, but then electronics got to be ‘throw away’ and it was cheaper to replace than to repair, plus, coupled with the hassles of waiting for parts and customers always asking “where’s my amp” or “where’s my TV”, it got to be a grind and wasn’t very profitable at all. I do make a few $$ here and there on unexpected events. Last year, the engineer from the local radio station down the road from my house showed up and my door to tell me that he’s got a dumpster coming the next day and to take what I want or it goes in the dump. So I rescued 7 reel to reel tape decks and fixed them up and sold them on eBay. I made enough money to buy four Bassmaxx subwoofers, used demo units, and that gave me immense pleasure. (My eBay money is my play money.) But those events are extremely rare. Now since I repaired this QSC amplifier, and have learned that it’s a common failure mode, I had the idea of offering to buy up the failed units for a song and repair them and resell them on eBay. Again, that may happen, but probably rarely. What I really need is steady income of a large nature. The average family income in this town is $150K. My closest neighbors are both millionaires—one’s a day trader on Wall St and the other is a politician, land developer and owns the largest marina on the east coast. No doubt, I have the lowest income in the whole town, including the local homeless bums. As much as I like to tinker with designing electronics, I’m more of a user. I love to use my Kurzweils to make music and I relax every evening by playing the “Steinway grand” patch. In day to day living, I don’t notice any needs that could be filled. Sure, I’d like to develop a subwoofer that has no moving parts and excites the air directly by ionization, but I realize that is way over my head. I really can’t imagine a way to come up with 10 invention ideas. Perhaps it was last year, but somewhere during my daily life, I encountered some situation where I got an idea for a possible invention, but I think at the time I deemed it impractical to develop and so I forgot about it. Oh yeah, I was interested in saving energy in the winter, and thinking about ways to make my oil burner more efficient, so I came up with a concept for a flue damper that was solenoid operated and would close after the burner shut off, to keep the cold air from coming down the flue and cooling down the boiler. I sketched a drawing, showing safety limit switches and the damper door in a section of flue pipe, but that’s as far as I went. As it turns out, there already is such a thing for gas furnaces, but not for oil furnaces. Some people I spoke with told me it was a bad idea because it would cause condensation in the chimney by letting the chimney cool down too much, but I disagree and think the benefits outweigh the negatives. But even if I took that to Invention Submission Corporation, I’d pay them a fee and then who knows whether they would just sit on my idea indefinately? Yes, I do have some skills. I have a refined and highly trained ear for audio and recording/mixing. I’m a pretty good video editor, but not very creative. I know how to use the tools and if someone tells me how they want a video to be sliced up and presented, I can do that. I know how to set up microphones to produce superb realism in a recording. I know how to author a DVD using Scenarist. I’m pretty good in PhotoShop and Premiere Pro. I’ve also designed printed circuit boards and made my own boards here in the shop. My skillset is all over the map, basically. I think they call it “jack of all trades, master of none,” or something like that. Yes, sadly, Classical music is dying. I was talking to my entrepreneur friend about that last night and he pointed out a possible opportunity of me finding a way to educate the masses and make Classical become popular and profitable again. I rolled my eyes, thinking of all the Tupac and Madonna fans and YouTube users with their “me, being stupid” videos. Some tell me that I should write books. Having read Rand’s “The Simplest Thing in the World”, I long ago realized that fiction writing was a very challenging task. I have, for fun, begun writing three different fiction novels, starting back in 1985, on an old IBM Selectric typewriter and up to 1993, in MS Word. I’m a fan of Michael Crichton’s writing and I’m continuously astounded by the depth of research that is behind his books. I’m not sure if I could pull off that quality of fiction. One has to choose a salient topic, one that has a reasonable probability of happening in our lifetime, and research it’s topic at great length. Then there is character development, bringing them to life, creating a clear picture of their physical appearance and their personality types, making each character unique, and the skillful flow of the plot, all the way through several “false leads” to keep the reader in suspense all the way to the shocking conclusion that makes the reader go “WOW!” In a way, being a writer is one of the nicest ways to make a living—no commutes, no dealing with inane traffic laws or drunk drivers hitting you, and no exposure to the public and their viruses spreading everywhere. Much of today’s writing can be done with scripts forwarded via the internet. Albeit, writers often travel, which expands their perspective on the places they may be writing about. I really don’t know how to go about choosing one of these directions without regretting my decision. It seems that I need other skills, in marketing, before any of these directions will be viable income-earners.

Another consolodated post: Starting with Inspector: I am aware that I can change the font size in Internet Explorer, however, the font used for composition remains tiny. And I’m reading on a 21” monitor (yeah, cataracts, it comes with old age). If the ability to use a font that suits the poster is an annoyance to readers, then why does the admin enable such features? It should be turned off so that everyone is using a common font size. I disagree that Primerica is a flim-flam operation. More likely, it is the Nicola Tesla of insurance/finance companies—heavily maligned by competing companies who have been running a non-stop smear campaign against Primerica. Even RipoffReport has ‘fessed up to drawing false reports on Primerica: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff10157.htm EDitor's Comment: Rip-off Report Investigation: Primerica gets a POSITIVE RATING in customer support from Rip-off Report and is fulfilling its commitment to provide excellent customer service. Primerica pledges to resolve complaints and address representative issues. For a long time this EDitor had concerns about Primerica because of the number of Reports about them. For many months Rip-off Report was looking into the company, even before they contacted us to resolve any issues and mostly misunderstandings being posted by competitors. With over 100,000 representatives and 6 million clients, Primerica is bound to be the subject of a certain number of complaints about improper agent conduct, as well as product and administrative complaints. Rip-Off's investigation found such complaints, but importantly also found that Primerica is committed to resolving such complaints quickly and doing everything possible to satisfy its clients. It also takes appropriate action against any of its representatives who are found to have conducted themselves improperly or unethically. We believe that the number of complaints against this company, whether through the Internet or other channels, is small when put into the context of its enormous size. Most big companies would never commit themselves like Primerica has. and http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff229393.htm SOME COMMENTS ABOUT PRIMERICA SEEM OBSESSIVE TO THE POINT OF BEING RIDICULOUS Another factor to consider is Rip-off Report has learned that, especially when a company is successful, some Internet and other complaints put forth as consumer complaints are, in fact, phony complaints planted by competitors to harm the reputation of the company. We have learned that a number of postings over time on Rip-off Report have indeed come from competitors of Primerica who wish to harm their reputation to gain a competitive advantage. Some have even become obsessive to the point of being ridiculous.. Any comments they make are made because of their own financial self interest and should be taken with a grain of salt when you read them. A BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY WORTH CONSIDERING Not everyone is a sales person - not every one is made for every business and your success depends entirely on the effort you put into it, but, the investment involved is very minimal in light of the training and licensing that it pays for - all this talk about $199 being a rip-off. I guess people are wondering "why do I have to pay to start a job?" But Primerica isn't a JOB, You're starting a business; how many other businesses can you start for less than $200? Life insurance pre-licensing education is provided at no additional cost to you. I myself have spent the better part of a year with this company and I have concluded that there is nothing shady or underhanded about their business operation. A good book that helped me to understand the “rah-rah” nature of their motivational seminars was “COACH” the Story of Art Williams. He was a football coach, and he retained the sports model of motivation when he moved into the insurance business because of a personal dissatisfaction with how his mother was taken advantage of by the insurance company that paid his father’s death claim. No, the problem is not the company… it is ME. Primerica is a great business if you LOVE people, genuinely enjoy striking up conversations with anyone you meet in public, and have a genuine concern for other people’s well-being (in that you can help them and earn money doing so). My problem is that I find most people repulsive and I have tried to avoid interacting with people—especially Americans—for much of my later years in life. I got into Primerica out of desparation, not desire to be in that field. The wrong reasons. I can see that now. Yes, I do have a problem with the sometimes religious bent of some of the trainers, but they do have one strong attribute the Ayn Rand approved of: the desire “to make money.” I’ll admit that I have much of the same problems as your friend. I get distracted. I have a wife and a daughter who bombards me every ten minutes. That’s why it takes me two hours to write this reply. I also have severe memory lapses. I set out to do a list of things, and halfway through, I forget the rest of the items. I’m forgetting things so frequently that it is becoming alarming. I keep telling myself it’s depression doing that, and that it’s nothing more, nothing physically wrong with my brain. I do have a great deal of “noise” going on and find it extremely hard to focus—even for five minutes—unless it’s solving an amplifier problem or designing a subwoofer. Funny how when my interest is piqued, my memory seems perfect, but for general things like grocery shopping, it’s practically useless… Yes, I’ve been away from Objectivist reading for far too long. 1976 was the last time I read an essay. My mind has “rusted” and I’ve been exposed to semi-mystical ideas quite a bit. In fact, my own father, who was an ardent student of Objectivism, after my mom died (just after Ayn Rand’s death) and a few years before my father’s passing, started to dabble in mystical ideas. He even watched Dr. Gene Scott on television in the mid 1980s and we used to meet at a diner and discuss the possibility of an afterlife, his own experiences with his mother’s ghost coming to visit him moments before she died, my mom’s “tunnel to the light” experience and so on. So I became more open to ideas about things we do not understand in conventional terms. The death of a loved one often does that to one. And as I get prepared to “meet my maker”, I too, am finding myself more open to considering (perhaps hoping) the afterlife and other things for which there is no sensory evidence. That said, I think there is much practical value in having non-contradictory premises, especially in a world political architecture. I consider Objectivism to be a philosophy for living in this world. But I am not convinced that there is nothing more beyond the here and now. I do, however, need to refresh my mind on the principles of Objectivism and see if I can regain the mental clarity I had 40 years ago. I know that I am a “technician” type. My friend, Bill, who is very perceptive, pointed that out to me. He said that I have a serial mind, not an associative mind, and that I am a “mechanic”. But “mechanics” never make a good living and live in beautiful homes. My parents instilled in me the belief that I could be anything I wanted, and as rich as I wanted to be. I have this stubborn belief and the refusal to accept “my lot in life” if that is to be a lowly bench technician. (Incidentally, I was a lowly bench technician for longer than many of you have even been alive.) The pay was low, the work repetious and I simply could not go on. I had periods of unemployment and switched jobs a lot. Then after retirement, I had no retirement benefits, so I went into businesses for myself, and failed multiple times. But I was free from the sense of confinement of a 9-5 job. My self-employed years have been the happiest, but the lack of money to pay property taxes, which are easily 500% larger than all my other expenses combined, soon started to create stress in my life. Otherwise… I would be quite happy today, even earning below poverty level. It’s the pressure that society has placed upon me to earn a large income which is depressing the hell out of me. I don’t want to become just another senior citizen on the street. My gosh, they evicted a 77 year old woman from her paid-for home because of back taxes, a few years ago and it made the newspaper. I was appalled at that. Now I’m facing the same fate. Damaged pychology indeed. It started when I was a child. I was ugly looking, big and out of place and that made me a target for cruel jokes and ridicule. From about 3rd grade on to high school that went on, and I suppose that instilled a hatred of people and made the conditions optimal for my xenophobia. When I began to have my first high school crushes, things only got worse. Here I was, this “creature” and socially inept as can be, trying to approach these girls, one by one throughout the high school years. Man, did I get shot down badly, over and over. Almost forty years would pass before the marvel of internet meeting caused me to meet my betrothed in the Philippines. Talk about mysticism—I thought the event was so extraordinary that it must have been devinely brought about! Even more perplexing was the fact that one of my clients bought a home brew piece of pirate radio gear that I invented, for $2100, which paid for my airline ticket costs for the first trip. Just as peculiar was the fact that I had FAITH that this lady wasn’t putting me up to a cruel joke, or worse, an abduction plot. I flew there with the belief that somehow, this was going to work out. I should note that at that time, my thinking was furthest from Objectivist thinking. As I started to spend more time around here on OOL, coincidentally, things got worse in my personal life, particularly finances. I am convinced that prescription drugs are not the solution to my problems. And since I can’t make the tax man go away, that won’t solve my problem either. So the solution is in earning a lot of money. But once you get past a certain age, society doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. I am relegated to the Home of the Old and the Useless. Employers don’t want to hire elderly because of the medical insurance issues. And requirements are stringent these days. This is a competitive workforce with employers demanding more and more education, even for simple jobs. I have to admit, I’m a dinosaur. This new world moves too fast for me to make heads or tails of it. What I love? Well, I can relate this: Two summers ago, when I did the videotaping of the Danbury Symphony, as hired by Leroy Anderson’s son, Kurt, I was in my element and had a terrific time. Setup, recording and tear down went perfectly; there were zero problems. I executed the entire process flawlessly. The recording came out beautifully, and I was personally very pleased with the technical excellence of the recording, and how my cost-effective choice of recording equipment performed second-to-none. I was paid $800 to do the session, plus edit and produce it onto a DVD. (For economic perspective, according to Ralph LaBarge’s book “DVD Authoring & Production” a project like this would cost over $56,000 and take six months to go from shoot to final DVD, if it were done commercially. I did it in less than two weeks and the result was the same, or better. So if I had my wish, I’d be recording classical concerts and getting paid the big bucks for being the one that can make recordings worthy of the $500,000 loudspeakers of rich audiophiles. I know that I love music. It is my passion. I am a music appreciator. But I love to compose music too. However, I’m not talented enough to become a notable artist. I doubt that I’ll ever be. But I’m content to dabble in it on the Kurzweils. I have a great deal of fun recreating a symphony on them and making it sound just like an acoustic orchestra. Unfortunately, there is no money in this, as far as I can determine. One think I’ve noted a while back: If I’m working on a project that I have a vested interest in, I’m into it. If it’s for someone like an employer, I’m not into it, but just doing it to put in my time and collect my pay. When I shoot video and record sound, in business for myself, I have a vested interest and desire to do the absolute best that is physically possible. And I can, quite frankly, make recordings that put even Telarc Records to shame. Too bad I haven’t the clout to become a recording label and get the big gigs. I’ve spent two years just begging the Bridgeport Symphony (a unionized professional orchestra) to let me record them at no charge. I’m their webmaster, and I spoke at length with their management staff and attended some of their rehearsals and took copious amounts of notes. What I’ve come to learn is that there is so much red tape involved with getting permission to record that it’s going nowhere so far. Such a gig would be my magnum opus and render the opportunity to show my abilities to potential clients. You know something else? When I’m engaged in this type of project, I feel young again, almost like I did when I was in my 20s and 30s and I have plenty of energy to get the equipment set up, to man the cameras and focus intently on shooting the video, as the audio takes care of itself, having been set up by me before the concert begins. The sweetest moment of all, is when I get home, unload the master tracks from the laptop and make a preliminary stereo mixdown to hear for the first time on my home brew sound system. That… is ecstacy for me. It definitely isn’t being stuck behind a workbench in some factory all day, repairing modems. necrovore: Leonard Peikoff does like to use a lot of birds in his analogies. I remember when I attended the last lecture I can remember, “Introduction to Objective Communication” in January 1980 at the Statler Hotel on 9th & 33rd St in NYC, he did his “crow epistomology” example. (There was also the atheist vs. theist debate in which there was this debater from the audience who argued the theist side, being a former Catholic, and since there was only a tiny lavelier mic for him to use, he was practically swallowing it during the debate and making the recording tech quite angry as a result. It was one of the humourous moments I recall from Peikoff’s lectures, but that’s another story.) I know that the “black swan of success,” as you put it, exists, but just not for me, in my current frame of mind. It seems as if my mental aura is pushing success away. But then, I look like a homicidal maniac, someone you’d expect to be the killer in a murder mystery film and not the type you’d want to meet on the street or place your trust in, unless you got to know me really well first. The problem here is that when met with an UNBROKEN line of failures, it becomes emotionally almost impossible to believe that success is possible. Once that happens, something in one’s body language radiates that lack of success, which breeds more rejection by client prospects. Now if I were successful recruiting and selling in the first weeks when I hit the streets fresh out of training classes, I’d show success in my body language and my confidence would be contagious and thus when I prospected, people would sense that “here is a successful man, maybe I can share in his success if I stick with him.” And I would probably be an effective recruiter and salesman. I’ve been an inventor, too. In the 1960s and 1970s, I was trying to invent some specialized broadcast equipment. It took me a couple of years to crack some modulation schemes and effectively design a modulator that met FCC Part 73.21 specifications. But I did it. I was obsessed with it for many years and I went on to invent a noise reduction system that would both get rid of most of the hiss in FM reception and also restore the impact of percussion sounds, the way the original CD sounded. The concept was pretty novel, and I went to many radio stations, promoting the idea, and finally went to several patent attornies, and investors, seeking to bring what could have made me a rich man, a la Ray Dolby’s Dolby Systems, today, but no one wanted to take a chance on something in a highly-regulated industry like broadcasting. The attornies and investors basically told me that it’s a good idea, but ‘by the time the FCC approves it, if it ever does, we’ll be dead and gone’. They were somewhat correct. I remember when Leonard Kahn was experimenting with AM stereo broadcast technology in 1962. It took him to 1976 to get a pilot test on WNBC Radio. Today, AM stereo is pretty common, but has been made obsolete by HD Radio (IBOC digital transmission). I spoke with Leonard Kahn a number of times over the years and he struck me as an arrogant person, later, somewhat of a bitterly-arrogant person. It takes a toll on one to have devoted one’s life to a singular goal, only to be outmoded by a massive shift in industry standards. I too, move too slowly. It can take me 3-10 years to perfect a technology, and by the time I do, the industry I targeted has completely obsoleted my invention. Successful people are able to react quickly to changing markets and have fertile minds which are constantly coming up with new ideas when obstacles are presented them. OTOH, when I encounter an obstacle, it brings me totally to an abrupt halt. I don’t just get a new idea pop into my head just like that and work around the obstacle—I get put out of the race entirely. I think the ability to rapidly think around obstacles is a talent. So my dilemma is, I’m not smart enough to be successful, but I will never be happy until I achieve the lifestyle of success. In reality, I live in poverty and am months, maybe weeks from a formal eviction from my own property… because I cannot pay the randsom fees that the town levied on my ramshackle abode. Thales: I think I know what I love doing. Problem is, there is little money in it and it’s a rarefied field that only respected engineers with credentials and reputation can get into. It’s a tied up field, IOW. Math? I flunked algebra multiple times. I can’t even balance my own checkbook! Yes, I am no good at math, but I can repair sophisticated broadcast equipment. Paradoxical, isn’t it? Just two weeks ago, one of my very expensive, very powerful QSC power amplifiers tripped a breaker and let out it’s magic smoke. Realizing I didn’t have $100 for round trip freight to send this boat anchor to Cali for repairs, which would have probably cost the better part of a grand, I spent the next five hours disassembling the amp. I was very concerned that the repair might be beyond my abilities because it uses sophisticated new switching power supply technology. How else would they get 7,000 watts into a box weighing just 59 lbs? So I disassembled with the intent of isolating the problem. I ended up, five hours later, getting to the power supply chopper MOSFETs, locating where the smoke had come from. I determined that one of the MOSFETs had shorted. And then I proceeded to identify the part and scour the internet looking for a replacement. Turned out very expensive, being $58 a piece with minimum order $300 and 21 day wait for next shipment! I then called QSC, as I discovered that they had a kit for just $157 that had all the MOSFETs and other components that typically fail, so I bought the parts kit and did the repair myself. I had the amp back up and running in another 5 hours after starting the replacement of parts. That encounter taught me that even newfangled technology, however complicated, may not always be beyond this dinosaur’s ability to figure out and repair. (Incidentally, it failed while I was playing the Ayn Rand/Mike Wallace interview…almost an ominous coincidence there.) As for ideas for inventions, I’m coming up dry. I really haven’t had any original idea pop into my head since 1985. Now I could decide on a goal of becoming the world’s best and most respected audio recording engineer, but I can’t even get a gig with the local unionize symphony that I already work for in capacity of a webmaster, so how could I break into the field of recording symphony orchestras in the New England area, the way Telarc records orchestras in Cleveland, Ohio? Jack Renner is making plenty of money at it, but I haven’t a clue where to start over here. I’ve put ads up in music stores, offering my recoring services, but not even one inquiry has resulted. The fact is, I’ve been trying to start a media-based business recording video and sound since I retired from the 9-5 world in the 1980s and it hasn’t worked yet. I am pretty much convinced that I just don’t have the right connections and the reputation to get the gigs. Working for Leroy Anderson’s son is one thing, but the man is pretty low-key and I’ve not gotten any work as a result of that concert (although he has asked me if I want to record another concert of his in March and I of course said “yes!”) But I can’t pay the bills making $800 every other year recording volunteer orchestras and a conductor who is trying to keep his father’s music alive in the public eye. You see, I have had goals in the past, and I’ve been passionate about them to the point of becoming myopic and stubborn, but to date, all I have is debts and a lot of hard knocks. I wish I were fifty years younger and still had energy and a lack of cynicism. I’m burned out from all these escapades.

Here's the current problem: I don't know what to do now. Every means of making money that I can think of has reached a dead end. After six months of prospecting and telemarketing, with zero results, do you think I was mistaken to lose my ambition to continue beating what seems to be a 'dead horse'?

Oh boy, this is exactly how I feel! It's so bad that in the past, it cost me a job. Now, it's threatening to destroy my marriage. My wife has to spend 3 hours getting me to wake up, some days. She hits me, punches me, even pulls hard on certain parts of my body that still have hair (leaving that to your imagination) and I still don't wake up. Lately, she started pouring water on me. That gets me up, but I still feel lousey once awake. I now sleep 12-15 hours. 15 hours, if I worked the day before and am tired. 10-12 hours, if I relaxed the day before. For the past 40 years, getting up in the morning was very difficult. My head always felt like it was full of lead, like it weighed 100 lbs. I awake and can't open my eyes without pain. I feel like I'm having a severe hangover, every morning. Even if I know it's destroying my life to lay in bed, when I'm in that state of consciousness, I don't care about anything. I just want to go back to sleep and dream some more. Oddly, when I was living in the Philippines, I would always wake at 4am, when the first rooster crowed, or when the guy outside my window started up his motorbike. I had no trouble getting up. But back then, I was engaged to be married, and I was living in a foreign country and everything was new and different. Back here in CT, I can never seem to get up before noon, unless there is a very important appointment to attend. Sometimes I sleep so late that I awake to see the sun setting. 20 years ago, I worked swing shift at a manufacturing mill. Man, that really wrecked my sleep cycle. I was bad enough before that, but things go worse after 3 years of working A shift for 7 days, then B shift for 7 days, then C shift for seven days, and the cycle would repeat. Even years before that, I would often be drowsy on the long commute from work. One evening, I dozed while on the freeway and awoke to the jarring stop of my car plowing into the car in front of me. There have been many times when I dozed at the wheel since, but thankfully, I regained consciousness before running off the road (they have those buzz strips on the shoulder of the highway now to wake you when you drift off the road). I used to fall asleep on the job, usually 2-3 in the afternoon, because I was too drowsy to stay awake. And on the night shift, in the mill, I would doze off, only to be awakened by the crew leader yelling "HEY!!!" at me. Every night, I go to bed with the resolve to wake early the next day. Every morning, I sleep right through the alarm clock, plus 4-5 more hours and when I finally do wake up, I am angry with myself for failing to master my body. When I do get up early, say, to attend class at Primerica on Saturday mornings, when I return home, I don't feel right. My head feels woosy and I usually have a headache, so I go lie on the couch at 1PM when I get home from class. Sometims I wake and find that it's 10PM!!! I can never sleep early. I'm a night person, at least in THIS time zone. No matter how much I try to adjust my sleep patterns, I always end up reverting to the late night mode. The only time I feel decent is when I get up after 2PM. If I get up before noon, I fell "off kilter" for the remainder of the day. 'Wish I could control my sleep habits, because it's one more strike against me achieving financial success.

I’ll try to consolodate my response to all posts thus far in one post to save on space. miseleigh: Naturally, the top Objectivists are going to have some degree of wealth. Ellen Kenner is a licensed clinical psychologist, is she not? I once had a date with the daughter of a Jewish clinical psychologist—their home was immense, it had servants and housekeepers, with a Steinway piano in a livingroom that was the size of a corporate boardroom and her father’s office had a 20’ ceiling and could probably fit my whole house inside of it, so these professionals make a lot of money, irregardless of philosophical affiliation. Peikoff is selling books and other materials, and as the intellectual heir to Ayn Rand, he’s quite a centrally-important individual with many responsibilities. They are not the most practical examples of wealthy Objectivists because they are either founders or earning in a profession that does not specifically owe its existence to Objectivism. I was talking about common people who practice Objectivism in daily living. Very few of them are above average in wealth. Many struggle financially, or are stuck in the same dead-end jobs as non-Objectivists. Galileo Blogs: I use the larger font because I can’t see the small print in most of the posts. I’ll turn your statement around and say “can you use a larger font? With all due respect, you reply is virtually unreadable with that tiny font.” Inspector: While Objectivism is a great philosophy in many ways, not everyone absorbs all aspects of it equally well. I found it easier to relate to the politics of Objectivism (the individual rights, man not being his brother’s keeper, etc.) but I didn’t grasp other aspects of it as well. Also, it has been thirty or more years since I read any Objectivist essays. I know I should get back into re-reading the books that are in my livingroom bookcases, and I fully intend to do so, one book at a time. I’m not faulting Objectivism for my lack of creativity, but I do get the sense that slightly mystical people have an easier time developing a positive outlook and a faith-based belief system that works effectively for them to create success for themselves. Objectivism, on the other hand, has made me painfully aware of the injustices I am facing, of what’s wrong with the world, and that negativity is painful to endure. How does one live happily in an irrational world? Ignorance truly IS bliss, on some levels. The more you know, the more flaws you see in the world, and the more unhappy you tend to be when you can’t control those things. I have nothing against Objectivism at all. I think it’s ideas are irrefutable. I just think that not enough, if anything, was written for the dunce like me who hasn’t a clue how to go beyond the dead end wage earning job. bobsponge: I’m glad to hear that there are some wealthy Objectivists out there. I can understand about the low profile. So then if all the wealthy Objectivists are out of sight, then to the casual observer, it looks like none of them are financially successful. I have a friend who is very intelligent and a good debater; he often questions my professed ideas of Objectivist origin, citing the fact that I am still living below poverty line. “What good is your philosophy if it doesn’t make you successful?” he asks. When I got involved in Primerica, I worked hard at it. I made many hundreds of telemarketing calls after I blew through my “warm market” (friends) who didn’t want to have anything to do with what I was offering. I spent afternoons prospectng at shopping malls and gas stations. I kept going for months, in the face of not a shred of success. But let me tell you, it wears on you after a few months. When you have spent all night inputting telephone numbers from small business ads in the paper and all afternoon calling those people and trying to interest them in the opportunity, and you get nowhere after months of this, without even one small success, it starts to wear down your enthusiasm. When I first started with Primerica, I thought I had access to the Holy Grail of financial services and that I could solve any family’s financial problems. I was utterly blindsided when I found that party after party had no interest whatsoever in what I could do for them. Well gradually, it becomes harder and harder to fake enthusiasm, and gradually, one’s inner disappointment becomes impossible to conceal when meeting the public. Now I am at a point where I feel that I have waisted half a year of my life on this stuff—while others in my home office have started up after me, and have built sizeable organizations and are enjoying success. It’s been the same thing for the past twenty years. In 1987, I started a typographic business. Grossed $1200 in income that year and worked my butt off for what worked out to an hourly wage of less than $1 on most projects. I closed that typography business and started a promotional services business that included video production and shooting. In two years, I produced one rough video on pinstriping automobiles for a client, for about $100, and another one that was an owner’s manual on video, for a replica car manufacturer (owned by a friend of mine), for about the same amount of money. Both projects involved travel, much of the day spent shooting, and a couple of days editing the tapes the old fashioned way. If I had asked for a higher rate, I would have had zero projects. I closed that business and later opened yet another as a color prepress designer. I got a few scraps from a NYC-based anime importer, but it seemed like they liked to spread their assignments across many designers, so I would see maybe one assignment every 6-9 months and starve in between. I had one client that looked real promising and for the first few weeks, I was raking in real income at 10X the hourly rate of my last full time employment job. Then that company went bankrupt and left me out $6400 in unpaid invoices. By the late 1990s, my pirate FM station had achieved quite a bit of notariety, and a local station broker, who was a Liberal and a real nice guy, who secretly admired freedom of the airwaves, was impressed with the technical excellence of my completely homebrew radio station. He said I was qualified to do radio engineering, so he acted as my agent and, using his good reputation, hooked me up with clients. I made a living for a few years, and then one day I met a consultant from Wisconsin who, upon seeing that I was driving an ancient, decrepit car, and had a wife to support, gave me some frank advice and told me I should be charging double what I was charging for my services. I gradually phased in his advice, raising my rates a little each year, until after four years, I had doubled my rates. But then the clients stopped calling. Work started to disappear. When I did work, the income was not bad. In fact, if I had that income five days a week, we could afford to live a typical lower middle class lifestyle. But I had more like 1 day per week of work from the radio biz. Then when I embarked on repairing the roof of my house, which involved demolition of parts of the house and a complete rebuild from the foundation upwards, I ended up spending all my time and energy in the spring, summer and fall since 2003, rebuilding one room of the house at a time. That, despite advancing age and declining health—because the situation here was so bad that no contractor wanted to “open Pandora’s box” as one contractor told me. I got a $170,000 estimate to rebuild my roof. That’s when I realized it was either me, doing the work by myself, slowly, or having the whole roof collapse on us and end up retreating and sealing off parts of the house as it collapses little by little. I’m making small progress on the repairs, but it’s been four years, with another four years estimated to completion of the roof rebuild, but the problem is that my unavailability for radio work exacerbated the decline of my radio business. One client has refused to pay the last four invoices since July, so now I am faced with suing them to get my money. And during the process of gathing my income totals, I see that this client provided 61% of my gross income last year. What I’m saying is that things are getting worse, rapidly. I often feel like a hampster on a treadmill, just peddling as hard as he can to barely keep up—and if I stop or slow down, I’ll fall off and incur critical injury. I owe a property tax bill, with liens, interest and late payment penalties, that is rapidly closing in on six figures. So right now I feel like the solving of my financial problems is about as likely as winning the jackpot in the lottery—virtually hopeless. Yet, I have no clue as to how to make REAL money. Working as a clerk at a gas station, or a greeter at Wal-Mart is clearly not the way. But I know no other ways to bring in income, however small. But no matter how hard I work at any of these throw-away wage jobs, I will never be able to catch up, financially, much less enjoy my dream lifestyle. I watched as my parents’ dreams faded away thirty years ago, despite their voracious appetite for Objectivist ideas, but sickness and medical expenses, coupled with the fact that neither of them had ever managed better than low-wage jobs, conspired to lead to their financial demise. I was talking with my friend, Bill, this evening and he pointed out something interesting: he said I have a “serial mind”. I replied, “what, you mean I’m like a serial killer?” He admonished me and explained that he meant that my mind processes on piece of data at a time. He went on to state that wealthy and creative people have an “associative mind”—they can integrate and process multiple streams of information in ways that the average populace does not. Therein, he says, lies their ability to be creative and to earn money. I have often been frustrated by the fact that I often take 10-20X as long to complete a task as most other people. Some say I’m more detail-oriented, or more meticulous. Or perhaps I get sidetracked a lot. That was always a problem in the workplace. Boss would say that my work output was too low and he wanted to see more volume of work completed per unit of time. Another boss wrote on my salary review: “Makes good first impression, but doesn’t wear well.” That was in response to the fact that I grow bored quickly with being a cog in someone else’s wheel. Another entrepreneur friend of mine, Pat, says that I’m definitely NOT employee material. And that he would never hire me, if he had the capacity to do so. He recognizes that I need to be in my own business, doing what I’m good at. Whatever that may be. The inequality that bothers me most is that all of the things I’m good at, seem to have no demand to support their vocational existence. The areas where people make a lot of money (stocks, investing, financial services, doctor, lawyer) are not areas where my natural interests and abilities lie. That’s part of the reason why I have been bashing my head into a brick wall with Primerica. There’s nothing wrong with the company, but with my attempting to force myself to do something that I’m not interested in nor good at. As things stand, I am finding that I really don’t know what I should focus my limited energy on at this point. Having that nose for profit is what makes people like YouTube’s founder a billionaire in just two years. But I don’t have a clue as to how he accomplished that wealth—especially when I try to start something on my own and it fails miserably and I lose money all the time, again and again. necrovore: Thank you for your compassionate reply. I think that your suggestion to read Edwin Locke’s book may be one of the best ones I’ve received to date. I will definitely order it, when I sell enough of my stuff on eBay to be able to come up with the purchase price (I don’t want to burden my wife further, as she’s already bought me some books this year). I do realize that my attitude can affect my success. The part I have not been able to master is how to maintain a positive, happy attitude in the face of 100% failure. One failure after another, with no success in between is wearing me down. It’s destroyed what’s left of my self-esteem, and my financial situation is dire as a result of my unbroken string of business failures. I’d like to be able to feel happy and positive in the face of all this, but I just can’t do it. Blessed is the man who, having been just thrown onto the street, penniless and homeless, is still able to smile and joke. I am not that man. I have tried the “my state of mind be damned, I’m going ahead” during my Primerica venture, but my enthusiasm faded after several months of nothing but one rejection after another. I spoke with my Sr. Rep who brought me on board today and he told me that if I have a problem that’s preventing me from success with Primerica, then it affects other aspects of my life as well—such as other business ventures. I think he’s right about that. What people here have interpreted as me blaming Objectivism for my failures is really me being too tied to reality to believe in flights of fancy. For instance, I really don’t believe that “wish for something and the universe will grant it” BS. But as has been noted here, many self help books are based on this mush. Although I will make one observation: if there is one thing that obscessed me throughout my life, it’s achieving better sound reproduction. I’ve devoted huge percentages of my waking day and my daydream time before sleep to planning, devising and realizing that goal. The problem is that I am not doing that with making money. I don’t know how to. Or I have some concrete-bound thought process that fails to understand that if I become interested in wealth and pursue it the way I did sound equipment, that all else would be added unto me. In other words, I can obscess myself with tangible, attainable goals (to me, that is), but goals that seem out of my reach, I don’t even try, because I believe it is futile and a waste of time. It took me from 1976 to the present to build my dream sound system. But I was totally obscessed with it. Now, some other things are not as well under my control, like dating, when I was a young man. Even though I would obscess myself about a girl, I was constantly rejected. In my diary, I counted 108 rejections, from age 16 to age 40, when I gave up on love. So obscession is not enough. There has to be more to the success formula. I sometimes feel that if I could be capable of having “faith” –something that my understanding of Objectivism has removed from my life—that somehow I could generate the positive attitude. Many of these successful people are mystical. Even my wife—she’s a Catholic, and she’s quite happy. She doesn’t worry about the future. In fact, she lives very much in the moment. I try to tell her to save money for retirement, but she insists on living for today, because we don’t know if tomorrow will come (citing that one can’t predict if one will live long enough to benefit from living austere in the now so we can have a future). It would really be helpful if I could talk to rich, successful people and learn how their mind works, and simply copy that. But that’s what Tony Robbins and Napolean Hill did. But I’d like to do it for myself, without the mystical slant, in a way that has meaning for me. If Objectivism is a “philosophy for living” then it seems reasonable to conclude that there would be some Objectivists working on solving that ever so important challenge of developing effective means to achieve wealth. Certainly Objectivism would be more powerful if it’s followers were all rich and powerful people, instead of impoverished people like my parents were. At any rate, I’ll eventually buy Locke’s book “How to Make a Billion Dollars”, because at least his writing will be consistent with my belief system. Unfortunately, Hill’s book has turned me off with his primacy of consciousness BS. I am the man in the rowboat, just five feet from the dropoff at Niagara Falls, the man who just uttered the words, “Oh, shit!”

I am thinking about what creates wealth and the means to rise above poverty. One of my missions for this year is to discover the techniques used by wealthy people. I have some preliminary conclusions: Personality may be more of a determining factor than knowledge in a particular field. Wealthy people have a clear idea of the specific concrete steps it takes to achieve their money goal. Wealthy people (the sort that have earned it) have tremendous passion. Wealthy people seem to be doing the kind of work that they are passionate about and enjoying it. At present, I have put the Tony Robbins book aside and am reading Think and Grow Rich, by Napolean Hill. As I read this book, I am growing increasingly disappointed in it. It is filled with hyperbole, is based upon a philosophical “primacy of consciousness” premise, and just seems to be increasingly filled with fluff as I read on. The author keeps stressing faith and repetition of self-talk, as if telling one’s self some hollow self-affirming phrase will somehow make one positive and successful. What the author has so far not addressed is how to find the passion, if one lacks it. And the meaningful concrete steps to achieve specific goals, rather than just a generalized concept. What I am finding is that I can list some of the things that I am reasonably good at, but beyond that, I have no clue as to how to take the next step and turn my skills into money. What’s worse, I keep making the same mistakes over and over again, with each business venture I’ve started up since my retirement from the employment field some twenty years ago. I keep coming back to Media—my passion (what’s left of it) comes back to sound and video recording, production and editing. I’ve loved typography since the 1960s, and had an interest in uniting all the different still, motion and sound media. Perhaps some part of me wants to be a film director, but my “rational” mind tells me that this is an unrealistic goal. Now here’s where I sometimes think that my Objectivist slant on thinking is limiting me: Napolean Hill believed he could do anything he set his mind to—even teaching his deaf son to hear. I’ve noticed that a lot of successful people are not Objectivists. In fact, many of them are believers in primacy of consciousness. They truly belief that their thoughts stir things in the universe and make the otherwise impossible, possible. I have always rejected that premise, since my introduction to Objectivism in 1962. I suspect that my practical-mindedness leaves out the “flight of fancy” beliefs in the possible that is outside what I know to be practical. Perhaps this limits my belief in myself to achieve huge goals. So, left with a more limited frame of mind that that which Napolean Hill, a very famous wealthy person, teaches, how can I achieve more than mediocre subsistence? And, having long ago reached a stage of “burnout”, I no longer have the burning passion talked about in Hill’s book. I think the crux of my challenge boils down to two things: How to rekindle “passion”, to become obscessed with something to the point where I let nothing get in my way. To discover, understand and implement the concrete steps that are requireed in order to attain wealth. I think one of my “fun” exercises could be to sketch out and then 3D model my “dream home” (this would be about a $5 million home in today’s market, based on what I see comparable to my internal vision of what kind of home and land I want to live in/on.) I think if I could discover a path that was specific, and fulfilling to me, I would stand a chance of succeeding. The problem has been that I have never found out what the specific day to day tasks are that lead to wealth. My year with Primerica has only managed to achieve more negative reinforcement. I did many regimented things, taught to me by the RVP in weekly “classes”. I did those things but achieved zero results. I believe that part of the reason for failure was because this line of work was outside my circle of interest/passion. It’s quite well past the time when I needed to have accomplished great strides in the wealth-making process, as a Sword of Damocles now hangs over my home ownership with the tax situation being what it is. It’s pretty hard to think creatively when you start to realize that your next home could well be a cardboard box on a sidewalk. But I guess in some ironic way, I’m always an optimist and have hope that somehow I will “strike it rich” someday very soon, even though all I continue to get is tiny scraps of work every few months. It’s a shame that the public schools never teach how to build wealth. History and math and English are all well and good, but practical training in the actual process of creating lots of wealth is missing. And that is where I am stuck for the past half-century. I get the feeling that Objectivism lacks the focus on how to make money and great wealth. It’s benefits are on a broader scale, but when it comes to things like rekindling passion, setting the proper mindset for success, and executing a specific plan for making money, Ayn Rand did not seem to address that. In fact, I never knew any rich Objectivists. All of them seem to be struggling students, or regular folks with regular jobs, stuck in the same situation as most any mediocre person. Maybe Objectivism is so tied to reality that it precludes mental creativeness and believing that the mind is in tune with the universe in the ways that Hill describes. If I could only believe that, perhaps I could hypnotize myself into success. Sadly, I’m unable to benefit from Mr. Hill’s writing because it is incompatible with Objectivism.

Yeah, that statement struck me odd. My mind asked the question: If Quakers are to have the right not to go to war, then what about people of other religious, or non-religious beliefs? The debate made me angry, especially with this Sword of Damocles that hangs over my home ownership for the past couple of years. That there are even people at all who believe in collectivist ideas like Mr. Finkle's is very upsetting. If there is one reason why I'd kill another man, it would be over something like this. ' I was delighted to see how many audience responses were rational and critical of Finkle's position. Many of them sounded like older, retired homeowners.

Let me turn your question around: "Is it okay to harm the few, for the sake of the many?" Think about the implications of that in the context of individual rights.

Did anyone else notice what I noticed? This expansion signifies that the US government is gearing up to escalate the business of war. That degree of new training area growth suggests that the army is gearing up to invade more countries and maintain occupation all over the world in unprecedented numbers. As bad as the theft of property is, we should not be distracted from the possibly dark purpose of this new facility.

I think that new technology that replaces diminishing supply fuels, and avoids issues that raise public safety concerns would help to reduce the amount of government oversight or temptation to regulate beyond what it government does already with hydroelectric plants, could provide competition to traditional sources and bring prices lower. My example only illustrates how much electric costs have risen in Western CT over the past forty years. Granted, we have computers that run most of the time, where in 1967, we had a big console television that was all tubes, running most of the day and evening. In both eras, we used electric clothes dryers. I don't think the sound system has that big of an impact on the kWh usage, because it gets used for such short periods and the dynamic nature of music is such that it may only draw hundreds of amperes for milliseconds during a musical transient. The amplifiers are power factor-corrected Class H amplifiers, which use very little energy at idle and at moderate listening levels. I think the biggest steady state draw we have here are our personal computers. But even so, I had computers in the 1990s and we had less efficient incandescent lighting, and a mercury vapour light outside that was on at dusk, off at dawn on electric eye, I used electric space heaters under my desk, and a 400W waterbed heater. In other words, quite a lot of waste, and our bill was $80/mo on average. It doubled right after "deregulation" happened in 2002, and has experienced huge jumps in the past two years (58% in two years!). It's just very expensive here. Total cost with generation, deliver charges and taxes is over 22 cents/kWh.

This is as expected, bad news. My January electric bill was $480. The rate increase went into effect this month. Last year, we had a 36% rate increase, and in the past two years, electricity has shot up 58% over 2005 rates. To add perspective, my 1999 bills averaged $80/month. In 1967, my bill was about $8/month. Today, $480. Last year, I paid 5X as much for electricity than for heating oil. We NEED cheaper alternatives!

As the risk of asking you to prove a negative, why do you believe that world bankers don't control America, (or its economy), and for extra credit, what caused the Great Depression of '29, if not the bankers calling in all their loans?

Why wouldn't you believe in that documentary?

Also, I was comparing how much tax K-C paid in the mid 1980s, a time when assessments and rates were comparitively low. That said, towns levy real estate taxes, and the federal government and state government get tax revenue on their business income, so it comes from various directions. Ann Arbor collected $13M in, what is most likely, real estate taxes. I know it's dubious to compare apples and oranges in this manner, but I have a hunch I would not be too far off. Tax reform is one thing I've been politically active in and researching the tax structure has made me aware of what businesses are paying.

I'm not. I'm making a 'ballpark guess' based on similarly-sized plants. K-C was a paper mill (I say 'was' because 3 years ago K-C closed their plant, citing the high cost of doing business here). Nestle, another company that pays a similar amount in taxes for a similarly-sized plant, also closed in 2005. I have no idea what their last tax bill was. But I do recall reading time and again, public notices in the paper about K-C being tax-delinquent, hinting that perhaps K-C was having difficulty raising the money to pay the town. I know that K-C paid $20M in the late 1980s when the rates were much lower than today, as were the assessments. Since that time, my own property assessment has increased 8.2X what it was 20 years ago, therefore, if the industrial real property assessments followed suit, then the tax that would be owed by K-C today, were it still in business here, would likely exceed $100M, based on the inflation of property values over a 20 year period. From that, I concluded that Ann Arbor's tax rate must be quite a bit lower, as a high-tech pharmaceutical facility like Pfizer's would easily be worth what a paper mill is worth, perhaps even more, in real dollars, therefore a $13M tax bill is amazingly low, given what it might cost them if they were located in my town.

The questions that pop up in my mind: what is the motivation of the producer to make this video? We can’t assume that it’s true, although it may be (but then if it is, wouldn’t the producer’s lives be in danger?) Gold is a stabilizing force. If paper is tied to gold, it is harder to inflate it. Lincoln’s greenbacks worked because the government had a vested interest in gaining the faith of the people in its new currency and had to produce a limited amount and avoid inflating it. Paper currency, in general, is easy to print, as such, inflation can happen at the will of the government that prints that paper. That said, it all DOES make some degree of sense out of the many ‘illogical’ government actions we have witnessed in recent history. History repeats itself because it is in the bankers’ interest. But that begs the question: can there BE such people, so evil, that millions are not enough, but that trillions, stolen from the people, forcing billions of people into abject poverty and financial ruin is required to satisfy their endless appetite for money? I find this hard to believe. How much money is enough? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to destroy the world for the sake of his personal gain. The conspiracy seems too implausible. It all comes back to, ‘what is the motive of Bill Still and his production?’ In fact, with all these conspiracy videos and web sites, what is the motive? Avarice and hatred of government? The desire to see the erosion of the fabric of society? (I’m playing devil’s advocate here.) It was interesting, but how can we check the facts? Who knows how to look up the quotes and find out if those public figures really said those things? I would feel more assured if the sources of information were revealed. It was something I'd heard in recent years, perhaps in an economy magazine while sitting in a dentist's waiting room, or some other random opportunity to read magazines. I don't recall where. But then again, I can't recall what I had for breakfast most days.

If we are to believe Bill Still's "Money Masters" documentary, then control of these matters is not with any of the presidents, but with the world bankers.

Where do you live, Arkansas? Over here in New England, it's costing me over half my income to school other people's kids, and I'm not even able to cover all my property taxes here because if I did, te utilities would be shut off for non-payment.

Ayn Rand answered this question at a lecture I attended in 1968: essentially, she said that the system is already there; use it.

That's a pretty low tax rate, actually. Kimberly-Clark Corp, in 1986, annually paid $20M in taxes to New Milford. I can only imagine what it pays today.

I'm getting a vague, extremely general 'feel' of what I think you mean, but nothing I can call rational facts just yet. If you can tie in, say, how watching purloined videos would, for instance, change something about one's personality that makes them unable to sell their services to prospective clients, or unable to gain employment, perhaps some concrete examples to tie the abstract concepts to reality, I might understand better. It is still too easy to fall into the mystical notion that if one steals, God is going to make life miserable for the thief and one will never attain money. But if one is to believe in a rational world, then there have to be rational reasons. Character traits I migtht understand, if I could understand how they tie in with earning a good living. (I'm really curious about this because I AM finding the attainment of wealth to be illusory and am wondering if it ties into some unethical things I did 30 years ago.)

I think the complaints boil down to the fact that some people don't want to be forced to pay for the price of DRM incorporation into the hardware, as well as the performance hit it will take in terms of CPU burden to process the encryption management. PCs are on the threshold of becoming very powerful, but this will set them back a good 3-4 years, not to mention add more bloat to an already puffed up OS. I guess the question turns to "should PCs be media/entertainment centers?"

That sounds a little predeterministic when you state that you can't know ahead of time how much moral departure you can get away with before it causes your death. If one limits their 'moral departures' to watching illegal videos, how can that be extrapolated to possibly leading to the person's death? That seems a bit of a stretch and seems to make the assumption, implicitly, that because one watches illegal videos, one's life is out of control in other areas, say, drunk driving (citing this because it is a life-threatening activity). If someone could lay out a logical set of reasons why watching illegal videos would really preclude one's ability to reason in other areas involving his survival, I would be very interested to see this logical argument. Also, in the lesser case of involving one's self in enjoying the "benefits" of theft, how would this lead to a life of financial misfortune (assuming there is no such thing as diety, mystical powers getting even for one's wrongdoings, etc.) I find it hard to imagine that an Objectivist would allow one's self to drift out of control because of a few purloined videos. But if someone can cite a solid argument for it, I'm interested in reading it.

I'm curious as to how you concluded that such moral departures undercut our long-term survival. Also, are you speaking man qua man on a wider scale, or the impact of such acts on one's personal life? Some would call this 'karma'--if we steal, then we are putting ourselves on a path to a vicious cycle of stealing and being stolen from. What philosophical reasons would determine long-term harm to one's survival if one watches an illegal video?