Being Explicit: Wealth Cap Means Don't Worry

 If you trade stress for more wealth, it will always be exactly worth it. If you stop stressing you will lose wealth of exactly the value of the peace of mind you gain. 

 When an action doesn't seem like it's worth it, it's because it's not. If you're preparing against eventualities you genuinely care about, it's not stressful. You don't get anxiety about going to the store to buy food, even though you'll agonizingly starve to death if you don't. You get anxiety about trying to make your boss not fire you, because there's nothing you can do about that, if and only if there is nothing you can do about it. You get anxiety because you've already spent your wealth cap, but hallucinate that you can spend more. 

 You can go ahead and stop hallucinating that.

 Put another way, if you don't have money for food and looking at starvation, you still don't get anxiety. While $food > $bank is unpleasant, there's nothing ambiguous about it. You don't attempt to go to the store anyway. "Why doesn't this fiver buy $10 of food? How do I make it buy $10?" <= that's what anxiety is. It feels like you're going crazy because you have gone crazy. Cue midwit meme. Solution: drop the delusion. 

 It is logically impossible to "miss out" on anything. If you do miss something, it will merely open up space in your wealth cap and you'll be able to allocate it to something else. 

 There's a few things you can do to avoid great divergences of spiritual and physical reality, especially the ones that can kill you. However, you have almost certainly done all these things already. Accept that they are done, and stop trying to buy things you don't have the money for.

  

 Crime really doesn't pay, unless doing crime is your end goal. If treachery is what you want out of life, then of course it's foolish to trade treachery away for anything. Otherwise, it always counts more than double. Crime doesn't just make the neighbourhood poor, it makes the criminal poor. Even if they're the king. 

 You never have to be concerned about the criminal getting ahead of you. Mindlessly secure your shit and don't worry about it. Even if he gets temporarily ahead, turns out karma is real and it will drag him twice as far back. 

 You don't have to worry about life-changing opportunities. They're surprisingly common. Daily for some folk. Revenge is Sour: if you "miss" one, it won't be long before you can make your own. The condition of seeing a life-changing opportunity is having already changed your life. 

 If you get "life-changing" amounts of money, you will squander it. Whether it's from the lottery or from fighting like crazy for a promotion. Don't worry about trying to grasp for every dollar. If your physical wealth exceeds your spiritual wealth, all that will happen is a correction event.  

 The upside is that if your physical wealth is greatly lower than your spiritual wealth, you will start finding $20s lying on the sidewalk. Usually metaphorical, occasionally literal. Karma is real and debts will be paid in both directions.

 Don't worry. I mean, unless you like worrying. In your case worrying more will count against your wealth cap. You will have to spend time and money and ignorance on worrying more, but you certainly allocate all your disposable wealth to worrying if that's your jam. 

 You can, however, allocate your wealth wrong. Trying to get rich for wisdom won't work. Trying to get wise so that you can be rich won't work. Especially the latter - wastefully spending your money is easy, but returning to ignorance is distinctly less so.
 Especially look out for things with proper market prices that you don't crave. If you live in a large house but don't value lots of living space, it's the market value of the house that will be charged against your wealth cap, not the value of the space to you personally. If you buy a flag specifically to burn it or a bottle of libation specifically to pour it out, the fact it has no value to you won't stop it from costing you part of your total lifetime savings, because it's an exclusive good that has value to someone else.

Americans Are Drunk

 I saw a guy. He was really dumb. Then I saw him get very drunk. He acted the same, if, amazingly, even dumber. You couldn't tell he was drunk if he hadn't told you. No novel slurring. Mannerisms identical. Then I realized I had it backwards: you couldn't tell if he's sober. Then I realized he was normal. Americans act drunk even when they're stone sober. Including acting stupid.
 This guy drinks constantly and is probably an alcoholic, but the endpoint merely highlights the trend.

 I never really saw the problem with drinking on the job, because I've never met anyone who acts sober when they're sober. What's the big deal? 

 I never really saw how drunks are supposed to be annoying for sober folk. I mean, they're annoying anyway? What's the big deal? 

 Americans aren't sophisticated enough to approve of both sobriety and drunkenness. Context sensitivity is too far for these simpletons. Prohibition failed, so they approve of drunkenness. Everyone should be at least tipsy at all times. If you can't actually booze up, you should fake it. Hence, they do. It's so common they forgot what it's about, and acting brain dead is just how they do things around there.

 Americans have cultivated a culture that's all but intolerable when you're sober, thus the strong push to get everyone to the bar, so they can bring their norms and their biology into harmony. Everyone is drunk and annoying anyway; might as well be actually drunk. Less annoying that way. Pratchett's Sam Vimes was knurd, he had to get at least a little drunk to reach normal. That is, he was actually sober as compared to an American's sobriety standard; incapable of acting drunk unless he was genuinely intoxicated.

 E.g. Americans aren't gregarious. It's just mimicking the drunk's lack of filter. "I love you man, no homo." "We literally just met." "You're the best." "You're not even listening are you." E.g. Americans aren't easy to scam, they're just too drunk to distrust. E.g. Americans like cars because you're allowed to act sober as long as nobody's looking.

 The only question. Which is it:
 1) "Nobody could possibly be stupid enough to believe I'm sober."
 2) "Nobody could possibly be stupid enough to believe I'm drunk."
 Bit of a toss-up.

Social Status vs. the Wealth Cap

 Social status is special. It's valueless wealth.

 You can have great social status, or a great wife, but as 'great wife' is defined as a % of your wealth cap, you can't have both. Unlike money, you can't buy anything with social status. Unlike health, it doesn't feel good. You won't be wise, so the world won't make sense. 

 You can have a marriage, a relationship and cooperation, or you can have a trophy, someone for showing off, but you can't have both. Nobody is that rich; guaranteed, as this is a relative thing. Your competitors are others with similar wealth caps, who can afford exactly as much wife as you can. If you try to underspend on wifing but get a trophy/cooperator combo in that category, she will be less attractive than your rivals' choices.

 Even if you do have money, you won't be able to spend it; it won't be real money. If you have a great house you won't be able to spend time at it. If you have an amazing car collection you'll be too afraid to drive them on the actual road. (And anyway you can't legally drive tanks on the road.) If you can spend it at all, it will have to be spent on maintaining your social status. Rat race treadmill.

 Even if your prestige attracts numerous wonderful scholars, you won't be able to understand what they say. You won't be able to sift the wheat from the chaff. It will be impossible to secure yourself against charlatans without also securing yourself against the folk you were trying to attract. This extends to dieticians and personal trainers. The prestige (or money) on offer will select for scammers who spend time on marketing, not on lorekeepers who spend time on gathering lore.  

 I suppose the wealth cap explains the problem with polygyny. It is impossible to afford two wives of the quality of a singular wife you could afford. If you get a bunch of wives to show off, they will all be individually terrible. Among other things they won't be able to get along. Total wife wealth remains constant. 

 Unlike great friends, you can't spend time with your social status.
 If you get in trouble, your friends will help you.
 If you get in trouble, your social status will attract rivals who will try to kick you while you're down.

 Social status is just there. It is still an allocation of wealth cap, because the holder values it.

 Relative or zero-sum competitions are never worth engaging in unless they have some non-zero-sum side-effect. All you manage is trading useful wealth for useless wealth. Accumulating social status makes you poorer in every way that matters. 

 Perhaps that's a good thing. You should seek huge social status precisely because it's a huge handicap. Take on the challenge, win anyway. Fail and fail and fail to have wealth against social status, so that you can finally succeed in losing all you social status.

 I can't help but say this is still the worst option. 

 

 Other handicaps are useful to others. If I break my back hoeing a row in a farm, others can at least eat the grown food. If I break my back trying a backflip, there is no useful wealth as a side-effect.
 I've said it before: seeking social status is inherently traitorous. It is a crime. As such, social status double-dips. A crime committed is wealth and counts against the cap, separate from any wealth you gain from it. This is why you can't spend the money that accrues to social status. Your social status cap is at most half your total cap, as the other half is taken up by the crimes necessary to build the status. 

 I think I could say that more clearly. If you steal $10, you have $10, which counts against your cap, and someone else is out $10, which also counts against your cap.
 If you sell something worth $10, you have $10 against your cap.
 Not really that complicated, yeah?
 Not only is someone else out $10, their suffering counts against your cap. The stolen $10 is worth less than $5 of legitimately-gained wealth, see? This is why criminals want you to be happy about crime. Relieves the pressure on their cap.

Speedray Works

 I'm somewhat suspicious of selection effects with uThermal, but they do perform as expected. Void ray strike force lets you deny infinity bases.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znop1PJSt3U

 

 If Thermal played enough to understand the speedray upgrade, he could have saved several voids. Incidentally he makes the classic error of making something that's going to die anyway try to run, instead of letting it shoot. Also carriers are dramatically better with the air armour he wasn't getting.

 Selection effect: the opponent did the Mechabellum error where he was countering the old tech while Thermal did new tech, thus constantly one step behind. When opponents don't make these horrible errors, Thermal won't post the game, because he basically just loses. As it happened he tried the void stuff against someone having an off day. 

It's Important So I'm Saying It Again

 Modern countries don't have men and women. Modern countries have women and prostitutes. The prostitutes are allowed to whore themselves to the women if they want, or even, lately, to each other. The women have to (stochastically) pay through the nose for this, however.
 Voter = woman. No exceptions. These days, prostitutes are also allowed to vote, because elections are made up and the ballots don't matter.
 Having a wife is dramatically cheaper than a prostitute, but of course what use would a woman have for a wife? It's not like she can take care of one. Thus marriage is de-facto banned.

Long-Term Consequences of Spiritual-Physical Delta

 Imagine your physical economy is 20% richer than your spiritual economy. Eventually the physical economy will converge on the spiritual economy. The wider the delta, the stronger the pressure to converge.

 What about the meantime? In fact, the physical economy won't converge on losing the extra 20%. The delta incurs a karmic cost. The spiritual reality will continually decay as long as physical reality is not in alignment with it. The economy will have to converge on 95%, 90%, 80%. Only after paying the karmic toll will the spiritual economy rebound and allow the physical economy to reach 100%.

 Czarist Russia incurred a toll. They were richer than they had a right to be. Hence, Russia suffered the USSR years. 

 Net worth is genetic. You can only rearrange the worth. More money or more health. More wisdom or more money. More beauty or more strength. You get richer as you get older because youth is wealth and older folk have spare wealth cap to allocate to money.

 You can also trade future wealth for present wealth. The rates are never worthwhile, but you can. 

 If your physical economy spends ten years 20% above its spiritual equilibrium, it will have to spend forty years 10% below. Or something in that ballpark. 

 The more someone desperately strives for money, the poorer they end up, ultimately. They manage to push themselves above the spiritual mean, and it costs them and costs them and costs them.

If You Can't Sell Yourself Into Slavery, You are Already a Slave

 Q: Why can't you sell yourself? A: You're not allowed to sell off your master's property, obviously.
 There are many good arguments for being unable to sell someone else into slavery. There are none against selling yourself. See also: needing special permission from master to be allowed to die. Killing yourself is vandalism against the State.

 Moderns are the most grovelling, servile bugmen ever to wiggle across the planet. 

 You can't marry a woman. The women are all married to the government, who lets you rent one for awhile, and charges through the nose for the privilege. Megapimp.
 As the women are all claimed by the government, naturally all the women's children are owned by the government, who asserts the right to take the child away and do whatever they want with it, for any duration and for any reason. The biological parents are forced to take care of the government's children according to government standards.
 No matter how much you barter, wheedle, scheme, or plot, you can't own land. The government charges you tax, you're renting. The government asserts the right to tell you what you can and cannot build on its land, as it obviously would. Through "eminent domain" the government asserts the right to kick you off its land at any time.
 You can't have your own job. The government charges your employer a (large!) percentage for renting its mortal resources.
 Etc.
 Etc.

 You know, it must be immensely frustrating for the boot. It's trying to stamp on a mortal face forever, and the mortal is licking and caressing the boot. No matter how hard it stamps, the damn pervert gets off on it. "I love a Strong Central Government! Slave me harder, daddy!"

 Admittedly this boot is pretty soft. Very lickable. I should say no matter how hard it tries to stamp; as the limp-wristed population is owned by a limp-wristed leader who just can't stamp all that hard. "Eh! Eh! Uh! Ih!" Allegedly in the interests of maintaining the ridiculous charade of the slaves not being slaves, massa is downright libertine. "You think for yourselves!" """Yes! We think for ourselves!""" "Very good!" """Thanks daddy!""" The women prostitutes are largely free to whore themselves to whoever they want, provided they're 18 when they do it. Certainly the parents have no say, as is meet for slaves. The government could do all sorts of horrible things to its children, but only does one of them. The government's minimum standards on caring for children are quite minimal. As long as you're not a heretic they won't even bother to check. The slaves can slave themselves out to whichever renter they want, and can even choose not to work and get paid for the privilege. As long as the government isn't currently asserting its right to make you fight and die for it, that is. The slaves are paid a pittance with which to buy any kind of disposable trinket they like. The government will approve of the sale of all sorts of useless tat. The slaves can transfer themselves to a different master...provided the new master will accept the hassle.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse, your yearning to be free...so we can ensure they are wholly divested of freedom." As always, slavery is not particularly profitable. Slave owners keep slaves due to  non-monetary motives.
 I would say it's outrageous, but the slaves are clearly having the time of their lives. You guys have your disgusting fun with that, I guess.

On Failure and Manicheanism

 Like everyone else, I was raised on Good vs. Evil. 

 As I am something the softlings would call a philosopher, I tried to find the correct descriptions of good and evil. What were the correct poles? What is "bad" exactly when it's at home?

 Problem: through Death, Life. Through failure, growth. Through Destruction, Wealth. Through hatred, enemies, through enemies, power. Through power, love. Through injury, virtue. Through despair, glory. 

 I believe the Gods, the true "creative" force of the universe, deliberately create new things through demonic energy. They create a hell, that must be invaded. They create a devil, who must be vanquished. Even ex nihilo must be earned. Creation is accomplished by destroying its opposite. 

 I would do that solely because it's fun. The greater the deterrence of the hell, the more devastating the devil, the more fun it is.

 It's not an accident that evil exists. It's not a punishment. It's a gift. Every evil is an opportunity, both for plunder and for honour. Even dying by taking on a power too infernal is better than refusing the fight.

 If you can't break your oaths, then keeping your promises is meaningless. The harder they are to keep, the more honourable. Friendship is meaningless without treachery.

 Gods, then, are incredibly destructive. A God who doesn't destroy is one that will converge on their spiritual nonexistence.

 Success, through quitting? Yes, probably. I don't grok that one yet, but there's no reason to think I never will. 

 Useful vs. useless? Efficiency is a sin, lol. 

 Permission, through forbidding?

 Through treachery, comrades.

 

 In conclusion, the Dao. 

 Nevertheless, there is something one ought to avoid. There must be something which is...anti-Dao. 

Destruction is holy.
Death is holy.
Failure is holy.
Hatred is holy.
Despair is holy.
Profanity is a gift.

Big wtf.
Where is unholy?

 

 Truth, through falsehood? A devil is an inherently false soul, and creation happens through them, as they have to be killed. Thank the devil for giving you the opportunity to fight it; thank the devil, for putting up a terrible fight, as the most terrible devils are in front of the most glorious divine truths.  

 I believe there is an idea, a fairly simple and even mortal idea, which encapsulates the anti-Dao. However, mortal language is explicitly designed to conceal it as much as possible. 

 You want to lose, but not die. You want to die, but not suffer death. You want to hurt, in service of avoiding suffering. You want to sin, specifically so that you can repent. Forgiveness is merely for keeping repentence score; once you score enough, sin again. Failure is success.

 Well, you want to learn what you want. You want to eschew all mortal propaganda, eschew all social constructs, shed all pressure, and achieve gnosis of your core desire. Thus, you can see how the only way to achieve that desire is to inflict the total destruction and failure of that desire upon yourself. 

 Nirvana is samsara. The more samsara it is, the better. Letting go of suffering makes you suffer more, which is how you know it's working. Unattach, so you can gain more and more and more attachment. Impermanence is grace.

 Revelation, through concealment: perhaps the way to learn of this core desire is to have everyone and everything gaslight you, trying to make you think it's literally anything but what it is. 

 

 To Exist, touch non-Existence. Do the impossible, embrace it, that you might be more and more possible. 

 

 I suppose the Dao that can be worded is not the Dao.
 Likewise, the anti-Dao that can be talked about is not the anti-Dao.
 Somewhat plausible. I will ask the Dao about it.