The screen looks all weird. I tried to adjust it, but I gave up - it's not that important, and I don't want to make anything worse. There's no red color, only yellow and blue and black and white.
Today I sorted through some more papers. I found my W2s from Weis and McDonald's. They were in the box of stuff that was in the back seat of my car. I remembered that I moved them out of the front seat because I gave a coworker a ride home, and then I forgot that I had stuffed all the mail into the cardboard box in the back seat. That's why I couldn't find my W2s when I was going to try to do my taxes this year. I haven't done my federal tax return at all - it's just several months late now. I just didn't do it. They haven't even written me a letter telling me that it wasn't done. I'm guessing they'll save it all up for later, and then give me some huge, gigantic fine to pay for not doing it. But instead, I found the W2s, and I'll soon be filling it out and trying to get a refund, if the government even has any money left to give to me (I realize we've been bankrupt for over a century now). 'Bankrupt for over a century' is one of those things that has to do with the gold standard. I won't get into that now.
So I went through a box of stuff, and I threw out a bunch more trash from the house today. These are just backlogs, not real progress. My future is no better because of this activity. However, it will make it easier to move out if I have fewer boxes of papers and junk that I don't need. My bills are set up to automatically deduct from my bank account, so I usually ignore all of my mail, including the bills, and throw it into a box. I hate the junk mail - it happens because of the government postal system - you cannot opt out of junk mail or ask the post office to stop delivering it to you.
The more I read Rick's forum posts about Peak Oil, the more I am believing it. And at the same time, there is another part of me trying to explain things differently: the economic collapses are caused by the money supply, NOT by a shortage of oil or any changes in how hard it is to get oil or the EROEI. It's too long of a subject though, and I'm not talking to him, and he's not talking to me, and even if he were, it makes no difference, because we are not making decisions together. Also, I agree with the conclusions that he's drawn, because they are still true even if 'peak oil' is not. It's still true that the economy is bad. He just has the wrong reason why it's bad. The economy is going to be bad for a long time, and it's going to have ups and down, boom and bust cycles, until an unknown event happens, and I don't know when that will happen.
But it's the money supply, not the oil supply, that is causing this. The price of a resource can go up, and it doesn't cause the entire economy to collapse, even if everything depends on that resource, IF the money system is healthy. This money system is corrupt and manipulated, and the prices of things no longer have much connection to actual scarcities or shortages. It's possible to artificially lower the prices of things by speculating. People don't just speculate prices upwards, they speculate them downwards too. Everything that I think I want to tell Rick, he usually already knows, as he seems to have more time to read and study than I do, and has spent more time talking about what's going on in society - so he probably has already heard about speculators and 'short positions' and how you can sell something you don't own, and then buy it later, and never actually deliver the product to anyone, and no one ever expects it to be delivered.
When prices are artificially lowered by speculators, that can cause actual shortages. Artificially low prices on farm products make it unprofitable to run a farm. That is why we have these horrible factory farms with the mistreatment of animals, and the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and people growing corn for ethanol instead of growing products we actually need. All of this is partly caused by the artificially low prices on farm products. I'm thinking of Garet Garrett's story about grain speculation. It's a fiction story but I loved the way it was written.
If people try to take delivery on things that you promised you would sell them, and you go to the warehouse and it isn't there, then that's a default.
I'm just writing this because I was reading his forum posts and this is a substitute for talking to the real person. This actually is not a very well thought out explanation, as I would have to actually talk to him to find out what he believes, what conclusions he has drawn, etc.
My only caution is that people should not assume that the price of oil is just going to go up and up and up. The price of oil is not controlled by actual shortages. It is controlled by arbitrary forces such as speculation and the banking system. Prices can drop suddenly when they raise the margin requirements for speculators, for instance. I'm rushing because I have four minutes before I get logged out (at which point, I will log back in again).
On a different post he mentions the 'total photosynthetic capacity of the earth' as being a factor that sets a limit on population growth. This is interesting to me. There is a finite amount of sunlight hitting the earth. I'm at the library and I'm distracted by all these people walking around and talking... Surface areas can be increased enormously with fractal-like objects. I'm picturing molecules that store energy differently than chlorophyll; picturing methods of collecting sunlight from plants or bacteria that survive at the frozen polar temperatures; the subject is both ridiculous and irresistible. Why worry about the total photosynthetic capacity of the earth?; and yet, what other subject could be more fascinating to talk about? Bacteria that thrive in hot springs or around the lava seeping from cracks in the bottom of the oceans; I'm imagining ways to get energy and food from something other than photosynthesis.
I'd look for real humans to talk to instead of some faraway online person who refuses to invest in this relationship; but there are not that many genius IEEs wandering around with a label on their shirts to tell me that's what they are. Finding people is a process that I cannot invest in right now. It involves the unbearable torture of using a dating website. And... I've been thinking about the phenomenon of bonding with people, wondering why it is that I so strongly, stubbornly refuse to bond deeply with anyone. I don't want to form bonds and then leave the area and break them all. I've been trying, and trying, to think this out and understand it and decide what to do about it. I am neither leaving the area, nor forming bonds, and the real-world result is that I have kept on living in an area that I hate, while also, refusing to bond with anyone. Why? Time passes, and I will lose the opportunity to ever have children. Then it will be gone forever. And I have so many opinions about children, about what is right and wrong to do with them, about how to feed them and how to talk to them and how to give birth - I have so wanted to try these things. But I loathe all the people around me and can't find anyone intelligent enough that I could stand the idea of living with them for decades. I only find IEEs of average intelligence who gladly accept and embrace the culture we live in. I want to find intelligent people who reject this culture.
I won't have enough time to write much. I'm just reading. My priorities right now are to get out of this apartment and adjust to living in my car for an unknown period of time. I still haven't confessed to my parents that this is what I plan to do - Mom will be horrified. Dad might just be sort of skeptical about it, but probably not as terrified as Mom will be. Mom will be in the 'OH MY GOD YOU CAN'T LIVE IN YOUR CAR!!!' level of response. Dad will be in the 'How do you expect to be able to do X?' level of discussion. Mom might actually freak out enough to invite me to come home and live in the house with them. However, this won't work for me, as I react to Mom's Paxil, Dad's blood pressure drugs, and whatever else it was that got all over my clothing and made me crazy for a couple weeks after I visited them. Being able to control my physical environment is the reason why I want to live in my car and not in a house that someone else owns.
So we are waiting to see this: 'How long until she freaks out and does something random and impulsive, and what will that be?' Put up an ad and go move in with a roommate? Go home to live with parents? Other? Live in the car, get used to it, learn to love it, overcome challenges such as zero-degree winter weather, and how do I pee in a bucket without anybody seeing me, and where do I store my leftovers after going through the drive-thru, and what on earth will I do with all the tons of extra money that I'll be saving once I'm no longer paying rent? That last one will be the hardest one, I think - woe is me, what on earth will I do with the tons and tons of money I'll have? Actually, it's much more likely that instead of earning and saving money, I will decide to drastically cut back my work hours. I will then spend much less money, earn much less money, and continue to save nothing for the future, but at least I will have free time. During the free time, what will I do? I'm planning to study accounting some more. That is meant to permanently improve my future standard of living by making it possible for me to do a job that requires thinking instead of physical movement, while at the same time, earning a potentially huge amount of dollars per hour. That's the goal: a permanent increase in my standard of living. During my free time, I will study.
I want to liberate everyone else and cooperate with them. What will THEY do with THEIR free time? Will they work with me? Will we trade with each other? What ideas and knowledge will they develop when they are no longer working to pay rent? When we are squatting on unowned land and hoping the police don't arrest us, and while we're keeping all our belongings elsewhere in a secure location like a storage unit, hoping the price of storage units doesn't rise too high...
I have to publish this. I'm out of time soon.
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