Vegans are Not Perfect

This is a common argument people use against veganism. People claim that no one is perfect and therefore vegans cannot be telling others not to eat meat because they too are not perfect. For example, when plants are grown, insects are harmed when tractors harvest the plants.

Vegans seek to minimize the pain and suffering inflicted on other beings. No vegan is perfect as you could argue even just breathing can harm a living being due to the butterfly effect, but most people would agree that just because it's impossible to never harm living beings, there should still be attempts to mitigate harm e.g. animal cruelty laws and laws that protect humans e.g. laws prohibiting murder, rape, etc.

Many people justify eating meat saying no one is perfect therefore they should be allowed to kill animals, but do any of these people use the same argument to justify abolishing murder legislation?

The definition of veganism as provided by the Vegan Society is as follows: "Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose."

The way I see it, animals are today's slaves. Only hundreds of years ago there were groups of humans deemed subhuman and subjugating them was seen as natural by social darwinists. Today humans widely believe in a social darwinism applied to animals, that animals are lesser beings. My hope is that as humans evolve animals will gain rights as did slaves, women, etc.

Inefficiency of meat production

Something else I should point out is that it is true that growing plants can kill insects, but plants grown are used to not only feed humans but also livestock. Growing plants kills insects, but keep in mind that livestock, in order to grow, are fed plants. Figures vary, but it takes between 2kg to 7kg of plant feed (mostly soy and corn) to produce 1kg of meat. Hence more plants must be grown to feed meat eaters than to feed vegans due to energy lost. The greatest energy loss is found in warm-blooded animals like cows as the chemical energy in plants must be converted into heat to keep the animals' blood warm. In cold-blooded animals such as fish and even insects the feed to meat ratio is lower. Nevertheless, it is never as efficient than if the "middleman" is cut and the human consumes the plant directly.

Stronger Beings Exploit Weaker Beings

In nature, stronger beings exploit weaker beings. Strong humans exploit weak humans who in turn exploit weaker humans who in turn exploit animals. This chain of domination and subordination ends up enslaving almost every being to some degree, and freedom is rare. It is possible for slaves to break free of their shackles. Slavery thousands of years before was achieved using whips and chains, but today it is primarily achieved using debt, inflation, and marketing. Men are piled with debt: student loans, mortgage, car loan, phone plans, school fees, and credit card debt. We slave away in a 9 to 5 job to pay off these debts, and we typically work till we are very old. Money printing and fractional reserve banking increase the supply of money in the economy, which increases the price of everything. Marketing increases the demand for everything by making us spend more on stuff (benefiting retailers). To afford all, this we borrow money and end up paying interest (benefiting banks). If we spend more, we divert less of our income into what really gives us freedom, namely dividend-paying shares and interest-paying bonds. If you pay debt, you are a slave and you work for others. If you own debt, you are a slave owner, and others work for you. Don't borrow from the bank. Own the bank instead. Avoid debt, avoid obligation, and avoid commitment. Free yourself first, and once you escape from slavery, help other slaves free themselves. Be a free man, be accountable to no one, owe nothing. Do what you want, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, how you want.

Is Evil Innate in Humans?

When I ate meat, I remember I ate meat very freely. I may have known that what I was doing was exploitative and that I was oppressing weaker beings, but people, when they are in the habit of doing something that they are addicted to or that benefits them, when it takes effort to change, they will naturally just rationalize it away.

If you were born into a family that owned and benefited from the slave trade, do you think you’d be likely to grow up and have moral qualms about it? No, if the opportunity is there for easy gain, people will usually take it and they will justify it after to themselves or to others.

Lasting Happiness Depends on Ignorance of Atrocity

A few years ago, I made the decision to stop watching TV because it was filled with crap. There was nothing on TV other than silly renovation shows and other filthy reality TV shows like Big Brother or X Factor. So I decided to simply watch YouTube instead. I purchased a Chromecast and started streaming YouTube to my TV.

YouTube was addictive. One of the benefits of YouTube is that it learns what you like based on what you have previously watched, and it recommends videos to you based on your interests. I started to become very interested in certain topics, such as investing, veganism, digital nomadism, minimalism, and antinatalism. However, being exposed to and becoming obsessive with all of these non-mainstream ideas has somewhat alienated me from the mainstream. This is something I have realized today.

I have become so angry with the world and with other people. I cannot stop seething with anger over just about everything. When I go out to lunch with my dad and he eats meat, I cannot stop seeing in my mind graphic slaughter of animals. I see pigs having their throats slit and cows being shot in the head, and they fall to the ground flailing. When I am with a group of women who talk about weddings and relationships, I seethe with anger because of how superficial these women are when they are obsessive about what colour of clothing they should wear or how to arrange flowers at a wedding. When I see someone at work feeling superior and putting down his subordinates or when I see someone putting down others because he has some status symbol, e.g. trophy wife, luxury car, or large mansion, I can only think about debt or wage slavery, and I know that status anxiety is the primary fuel of the wage slavery system. I see the dark side of everything and it makes me really angry and also really depressed. I cannot stop thinking about everything that is wrong with everything. There is absolutely no positive thinking with me. I can only think negatively, but that is because I am convinced that I am viewing the world objectively. I am convinced that, in reality, we live in a negative world, and positive thinkers are deluded.

It’s not just YouTube. I admit it’s also other circumstances in my life that affect me such as my parents’ divorce as well as tensions with friends and colleagues at work. I have also experienced painful breakups with girls.

There’s not much I can do. One option is to conform to society. I can try to be normal. I can assimilate. But once you know something, you cannot fool yourself. Ignorance is bliss, but once you know the truth, you cannot forget it. If you drank a yellow liquid thinking it was a delicious soft drink, then all of a sudden you realize it is some guy’s urine, you cannot simply erase that knowledge from your mind and go back to pretending that you are drinking a delicious soft drink. The same applies with all the filth in society. Once you’ve seen the truth, you cannot unsee it.

There is no option then but escape. I need to retire and get out of the country where I can be alone and start a new life. I need to save up enough money to do this. While I am doing this, I need to be an urban hermit. I just go to work, come back home, watch YouTube and Netflix, and then go back to work again. It’s tough working and pretending to be normal when you’re not. It’s hard faking it, but it has to be done. I need to become a millionaire before I drop out of society and go ghost. I just hope I can do it before I turn 40. My goal is to be a millionaire in my thirties. Once I am a millionaire, I will quit and retire. I will start a new life. I am thinking I will buy websites off Empire Flippers and spend the rest of my life managing websites for a living. Even if I fail, it doesn’t matter because I am a millionaire who lives off dividends. I will try something else. Managing websites for a living will allow me to live anywhere, but I am sure there are other things I can do to make money online, and even if it doesn't worki, it doesn't matter because I live off dividends. I can travel to, say, Kuala Lumpur, rent a one-bedroom apartment there, and then spend all my time in co-working spaces there managing my websites, and if I feel lonely I can use the internet to meetup with fellow vegans there. I will be free to be with whomever I want. It will be beautiful. Even if things don’t work out, I can just leave and go to another country, such as Bangkok, and even if things don’t work out, I can just fly back home. The bottom line is I have freedom to do what I want.

Human Cattle Are Victims of the Conformist Consumerist Narrative

Don't be gullible. Don't buy into the conformist consumerist narrative that, to be a normal person, you must get married, get a mortgage, and have children.

Of course you will be fed the lie that if you have a spouse, a mortgage, and children, these status symbols show that you have conquered in life and have dominated, but in reality these expenses are huge (it costs $400,000 to raise one child) and you will be in debt up to your eyeballs. You will be forced to work a 9 to 5 all day and every day until you are very old, and then you retire and shortly thereafter you will die.

Even if you think you are lucky because you have found a spouse who financially supports you, being financially independent on someone means that you are their slave. There are many women who marry rich men only to find that they are financially dependent on the man. They spend no time at work thereby having no skills, which means if the man leaves them, they become unemployed and on the streets, which means they endure any abuse the man imposes on them.

Just like a cow in a dairy farm exploited for its milk and slaughtered thereafter so too human cattle are fed the narrative of marriage, mortgage, and children, and rather than giving up milk they give up their labor, their time, their effort, their freedom, their lives.

Work hard. Invest for yourself. Retire by 35. 

Only Passive Income Can Break the Shackles of the 9-to-5

I am trying not to feel any emotion at work. I just need to remember that I am there only to make money. All I need to do is survive. I just need to do what they say. It will only be about five more years and then I think I will retire. My manager doesn’t seem to speak to me much, but this is nothing unusual. He is that sort of person. It doesn’t really bother me that much. If I get no work, I can always find things to do.

I don't want a promotion. It's more effort than it's worth. For the same reason, I won't try to change jobs. Going to interviews and writing up a resume is just too much for me. I will just go to work and avoid trouble. I will move where they move me. I will dedicate the rest of my years in this job trying to risk manage everything. That is, I will imagine every possible way things can go wrong and I will take action to make sure it doesn't happen. That's what everyone else seems to do anyway. There is definitely a risk-averse culture in my workplace.

For about a year now, I’ve been saving up cash because I figure I’d want to buy a house or maybe I’d want to run an online business. However, I’ve found recently that an online business is just hard. I think it’s because I work all full-time and when I’m not working I’m just tired, so it’s difficult. I will keep trying to find a way to make money online, but so far the only thing that has proven itself is investments in ETFs, so this week plowed about $35,000 into ETFs. In particular, I am investing in ETFs that pay very high income. I am going all in on passive income. I see passive income as the only reliable route to freedom, and there is nothing I want more than freedom right now. I have even borrowed money from my margin loan account into order to invest into these ETFs. I am not concerned about borrowing money to invest in ETFs. I figure that I have so much money in my superannuation fund (retirement fund) now that I can afford to carry around debt until I am sixty or whenever I get access to my superannuation. When I do get this superannuation money, it should be over $1 million, which will easily pay the $50k or so worth of margin loan debt I will have.

The bottom line is to keep doing what I’ve always been doing, which is to go to work, to work hard and avoid trouble. I will be thrifty. I have allowed myself to spend my passive income and a little bit of my salary (about 15%), but that is it. It will not be too hard now because I am producing quite a bit of passive income. Over time, as my passive income increases, it will get easier. I really have little to be concerned about. Everything will take care of itself if I follow the system.

If there is anything wrong with me it is that I am too polite, and I will need to be careful I don’t give away my money to others. I must not allow myself to be manipulated. I will need to be strong. I love to talk about investing. It really is my only passion. Of course, talking about money is dangerous.

Anyway, I have a purpose and a system now. I go all in passive income. As time goes by, my passive income rises and my life gets more comfortable. Once it starts getting really comfortable, then after about 2020 I will start to semi-retire, which I suppose will mean I will take longer holidays off from work. I will not be afraid of taking leave with half pay. Maybe by then I will hate my job so much I will just quit. I don’t know. We will see.

Debt Seen By Most as Harmless

There has been a study done that shows a correlation between a person's credit score and his or her ability to be in a committed relationship.

I have no idea what my credit score is, but I am fascinated by how many people are obsessed over the number as if their ability to pay a debt is very important.

I believe the reason why so many people believe they must get a good credit score is because they believe that it is inevitable that they will go into debt in their lives, and if they are going to go into debt anyway, why not pay a lower interest rate by having a good credit score?

All this underlines how successful banks are in duping people into believing that they absolutely must go into debt. Most people today see debt as a normal part of living.

I see it different. Debt is a promise by you to pay someone in the future. You are binding or enslaving your future self. It is an act that goes against personal freedom.

Of course, you consent to debt, but think about how you thought and behaved ten or twenty years ago. Chances are it is nothing like how you behave today. As humans we change. When you think about who you are today and who you will be decades into the future, we may as well be talking about completely different people.

The credit score is a measure of how good of a slave you are, how well you can submit and grovel at the feet of the powerful. A high credit score is nothing to be proud of, in my opinion.

Nine-to-Five Workers Are Free-Range Slaves

Man, I hate my job. It really is painful. The main problem is that I am just bored. I also hate the idea of being tied down to something for the rest of my life. I feel like my whole life is being taken away from me. I thought at first maybe I need to get a new job. Maybe I need to do extra study and start applying for another job, but the more I think about it the more I realize that doing this will only push me deeper into the nine-to-five world that I hate. I need to escape. I know for sure now that my dream is to become a digital nomad. I am happy to work but I want to work from my laptop, and I want to be able to work from anywhere where there is internet connection.

The pain I’ve been suffering at work seems to be ramping up. I seem to be getting more work, but for some reason I just feel really unmotivated. People I work with are also just plain annoying, and the fact that I’m stuck with them makes my life even more difficult.

At work today I was thinking about financial ratios. For example, there is the price-earnings ratio, which is the price of, say, a business divide by its earnings. If someone wants to buy this business, they can quickly assess whether the price it is selling for is worth it.

Another ratio or index I thought about was what I call the “freedom index,” which is the ratio of passive or semi-passive income to "active income." I'm not too sure if "active income" is a real term, but it is the opposite of "passive income," that is, you have to work for active income whereas passive income is income you don't have to work for e.g. a savings account pays you interest without you doing any work.

Suppose currently I earn about $10,000 per year in passive income and I earn $75,000 per year from my job. This means the ratio of passive income to active income is 13% The higher the number, the freer you are. The lower the number, the more you are subject to wage slavery.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that we are not free. At least, most of us are not. Many slaves in the past were confined and exploited like today's cows, chicken, and pigs in CAFOs. However, slaves revolted. As a result of this slave rebellion, most of us think we are free when in fact we are merely free-range slaves. We think we are free, but with the mortgage, car payments, and other debt, we have little room to move.

I need to replace my active income with passive income or at least semi-passive income that can be earned on a laptop so that I can become location independent.

I don't know exactly how I will become a digital nomad, but I know I will need to move gradually. I don't think I can just quit my job tomorrow. I am currently doing further study, but I am thinking of just quitting. I have an exam soon. I'll finish that off and rethink. I feel now that studying is really just a waste of time, so after this exam I might just put further study on hold. I will continue to save up and invest, but I will focus on build up my knowledge of ecommerce. I will slowly transition so that I move away from my nine-to-five and towards a location independent lifestyle.

Lilja 4-Ever

I just saw this movie, which was about underground sex trafficking. I'm feeling really sad now. Feel like there needs to be something I can do to help these girls.
Sexual slavery is really an example of capitalism at its worst. If the private sector had its way, sexual slavery would be rife. In order to limit sexual slavery, the freedoms of enterprise must be curbed so that they cannot enslave innocent young girls for their profit.

This is why government must intervene to set laws that protect human life, why government must fund police departments that investigate sex trafficking.
We can hope that public servants can be idealistic enough to create laws that protect the innocent and police also be idealistic or altruistic enough to implement these laws.

Cheap Houses (~$50,000) in South-East Asia

The Christmas and New Years holiday is coming to an end. I had some minor surgery yesterday and so had permission from the doctor to take today off to recover, but tomorrow I will need to go back to work. I am dissatisfied with my job at the moment. I'll try to fix this problem by finding a new job. I haven't been applying for job for about a year, so getting back into it is difficult, but I am motivated by the desire to leave my old life behind and try something new.

Most people think they need $1 million before they can retire. They base it on the assumption that they would need to earn about $50,000 a year to have a reasonable retirement. In order to generate $50,000 per year from an investment that provides 5% per year, you'd need $1 million. But saving $1 million could take decades. Assuming you earn the average $50,000 per year, and then assuming that after deducting taxes and living costs you can save $30,000, then it will take you 33 years to save up $1 million (assuming, for simplicity, your savings produces no interest). In other words, you need to slave away for 33 years! I have gone through only four years of full-time work and I'm ready to throw in the towel!

There needs to be a better way.

One solution is to retire in South-East Asia. A normal two-story house with three bedrooms in an east-coast city in Australia will cost about $500,000. With aggressive saving, this will take about 15 years to pay. With a mortgage that adds interest charges and other fees, it may take longer, say, 20 to 30 years to pay off your mortgage.

However, according to the YouTube video above, a normal two-story house with three bedrooms near Chiang Mai, Thailand costs around $30,000 to $50,000. That is ten times less! Therefore, instead of working 20 to 30 years before you can afford retirement, you can afford retirement after two or three years of aggressive saving!

According to JC, there may be laws in Thailand or other Asian countries that prevent foreigners from owning real estate. Another option may be, instead of using your savings to buy a house, to put it inside a savings account in Australia (or the US or Europe) and then transfer the interest income to Asia to pay for the rent. This will often work because interest income on savings accounts tend to more or less be the same as as rental yields. Renting may be a safer option because, if you live in Chiang Mai for a while and don't like it, renting provides you with flexibility to move away whereas buying real estate normally comes with massive moving costs. If you have equity in your home, you can convert that into an income stream by renting the house out. This rental income stream, in addition to stream of income from interest on savings, can be combined to fund living costs in Chiang Mai.

What this means is that, for me, I could retire right now, even though I am still in my late twenties. For those who don't have any money, all it takes it two or three years of aggressive savings before you can afford to retire in Asia. There is hope.

Why Debt is Bad

"The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender." Proverbs 22:7

Whenever I exercise, I like to listen to podcasts, and one podcast I love to listen to is The Survival Podcast (TSP). TSP teaches about survivalism, but don't think this guy is a psycho right-wing racist who is accumulating guns and ammo to prepare for a war with the government. He (Jack Spirko) gives very useful and practical advice to teach us all how to live our lives and to increase our chances of survival if times get tough--or even if they don't!

One tenet TSP hammers home is that debt is bad. In Episode 193 - Debt Elimination is Survivalism 101, Jack explains how you cannot expect to be focused on survival and have the shadow of debt hanging over your shoulder. In Episode 438 - What Debt Freedom Means, Jack gets more personal, giving us a story about how he struggled with debt fifteen years ago--how the debt start out small but eventually grew like a cancer. He made a stand to fight the debt and how he is free of debt, and as an old man he is appealing to the younger generation to stay away from something that had a profoundly negative impact on his life. Both these podcasts are very insightful and it's incredible to see the sinister side of debt exposed by one of its victims, especially now in Australian during a period in time when many people seem to be so desperate to buy a home that they are throwing themselves at the banks because they want more and more debt to fund their dream homes.

Spirko claims that the cost of debt is not just the money (that is, the interest). Debt wastes money but it also wastes time and life. I would add that the cost of debt is definitely not just the money (although debt on, say, a standard home loan can be massive) but debt also comes at the cost of freedom. When you take out a loan, you lose not only money that you must pay back to the bank but you also force your future self to work, which reduces how much freedom you have. Quite literally, as the bible explains, debt is slavery. The people with mortgages, credit card debt, and car loans work like slaves. The banks and their shareholders are the slaveowners.

Mortgage debt in Australia is even worse than mortgage debt in America because in Australia banks have the right to sieze all others assets if you are unable to pay your mortgage. If you default on your home loan, the banks can sieze not only your house but your car, your savings, and all your belongings--and you're broke. In America if you cannot pay your home loan you can walk away and all your other belongings are safe. This means that in Australia those in debt have it tougher. They must focus on paying the mortgage and not consider anything else.

The Good Side of Debt

I'm not saying that you should never ever go into debt at all. I do believe that there are some times when debt is a good idea. I think that you should go into debt if you really need to go into debt. For example, if you are starving and you need to borrow money to buy food, then it's probably a good idea to go into debt. If you are living with your parents and your parents are sexually abusing you and you don't like it, you may go into debt to buy a home for yourself.

There are times when debt can be profitable. For example, if you borrow $100 and use that $100 to buy an asset that appreciated by 10 per cent to $110 and you pay back the bank $105, you make a $5 profit. You can use the borrowings to buy stocks, property, or even to start your own business. It is possible to make debt profitable. However, it is difficult. If there is such an asset that is guaranteed to go up in value more than the cost of borrowing, you can be certain the banks would rather buy that asset themselves rather then hand you the money to buy the asset. By handing you the money to buy that asset, the banks have determined that that asset is too risky for them to hold, so they give you to the money and you bear all the risk.

If you have great skill, you can borrow money to start your own business and make a lot of money, but this is highly risky. If you borrow thousands of dollars and your business fails, you not only have the disappointment of a failed business but also the stress of debt that still remains even after your business fails.

Don't think that debt is costless, that you can just borrow and there will be no consequence to your borrowings. By going into debt you are making a bold prediction about the future. When you borrow money to invest in shares, you are predicting that shares will go up in value. When you borrow money to start your own business, you are predicting your business will be profitable. You may be right, but you are more likely to be wrong. You need to be either very lucky or you need to work very hard.

The bible says that borrowers are slaves and lenders are slave owners. A bank's primary function is to coordinate the interests of borrowers and lenders. Hence the bank's primary function is to bring together slaves and slaveowners. The bank is a slave market. Instead of whips and chains used to inflict pain and limit freedom, instead the threat of default and seizure of assets are used to instill fear.

Big Sugar

I have just watched a documentary on Google Video called Big Sugar. I have embedded the video above.

Big Sugar talks about how important sugar is as a commodity. The documentary also looks into how sugar suppliers corrupt politicians in the United States. Also highlighted is the poor labor conditions that workers face in sugar plantations.

I have always dreamed of owning a large plantation where I could grow coffee, sugar, or some other important crop. I believe that the best way to help the poor is to give them a job. Poor people tend to be unskilled and less education, so a simple job, usually in agriculture or manufacturing, is best. How much to pay workers and how well to treat them is a tough issue. If you pay workers too little, some people may see this as unethical or cruel. If you pay workers too much, your business may no longer be profitable, which means you cannot expand the business, which means fewer people are employed.