If I Had a Billion Dollars --

-- the red light on my computer's mute key, f6, wouldn't go from functional to non-functional or vice versa every time my OS updated. And similarly, I wouldn't have to tell my blog software not to count my own pageviews for the blog every time I turned on the computer, because that box unchecked itself every time I turned off the computer. I can't afford to get a new computer every time one malfunctions, or get it repaired or other fancy rich-guy stuff like that.

If I had a billion dollars I'd have an EV and solar panels on my roof, and so would a few nonprofit organizations, courtesy of me.

If I had a billion dollars I'd have an extra-fancy strap on this watch, here, and I'd pay somebody to attach it to the watch because I'm really bad with that sort of fingertip type work.

If I had a billion dollars, I would finally find out what truffles taste like if you just eat one whole, as opposed to eating some food which just has tiny specks of truffles in it which you can barely see but which make the food irresponsibly expensive for you to eat.

If I had a billion dollars, I would finally know once and for all if becoming rich still leaves you unhappy. I strongly doubt that a billion dollars wouldn't make me very, very happy for a very long time, maybe forever. I think that people who say that money lacks such power simply don't have enough experience with poverty to appreciate being rich. And you'll notice that most of the rich people who say money can't make you happy do NOT give all their money away, and that that's not just because they are too kind to make others unhappy with money, but because they're basically full of shit, in addition to being full of money.

I just did an update, and the red light on my f6 key went from working to not working. I really like that red light when it works. That's what set me off into thinking about having enough money to own multiple computers and and an EV and solar power and to be able to give generously to causes I find to be good and to be able to obtain a truly fine watch band without giving it a second thought and eat all the truffles I could eat.

Here's to Fully Automated Luxury Communism bringing all of those things, and much, much more, to everyone on Earth, very soon. Cheers. First step: vote Trump out. I know, I know, Joe is hardly a Fully Automated Luxury Communist dream come true, but beggars can't be choosers and right now the choice is Trump or Joe, and Joe's a lot closer to want we want even though he's very far from what we want. The Communists in Germany should've voted for Hindenburg along with the Social Democrats in 1932...

Dream Log: Physics and Disapproval

I dreamed that my brother was living with some fanatical Christians. They may have been his father- and mother-in-law, but I don't remember meeting his bride. Their home, a large apartment on a high floor of a drab brick building among high drab brick buildings, had the look of guilty religious conformity. Even the benches on either side of one long narrow table looked like church pews.

I had brought with me an armload of books, mostly books on topics of physics and math published by Dover, such as this one:

My brother had some Dover books on related topics, and he seemed to deliberately be mixing up his Dover books with mine. I kept trying to separate them again, and I asked myself in vain why I had brought so many books with me to begin with. It wasn't as if I was going to teach my brother anything about such things. He's an accomplished mechanical engineer, his knowledge of physics and advanced math is far ahead of mine. And I also wasn't intending to give him any of the books or loan any of them to him. And I felt sure that my brother knew all of this. I wondered whether he was teasing me by mixing up his books with mine.

I scrambled around, trying to make sure that I had all of my books and none of my brother's, getting ready to flee this place. I asked myself why I hadn't carried the books in a backpack, or at least in a box: there were too many of them to comfortably carry in my arms.

My brother's mother-in-law (I presumed) was darting around and loudly disapproving of me and my scientific outlook. Then she spotted, among my books, this one --

-- which may well have been the only book ever written by a communist, small- or capital-c, whose title or author she would've recognized -- and she became louder and more agitated still, screeching, "He's communistic! He's communistic!"

For a moment I thought of correcting her, telling her that the correct adjective was "communist," or, even better, she could use the noun form and say that I was a communist. But immediately I asked myself what good that could do. It was about then that I woke up.

"Libertarianism, Therefore, Is The Representation Of Property In Government -- "

" -- the right which it demands is the right for money to rule. In this respect libertarianism is the new aristocracy. Its substance is the same as that of the old aristocracy, only its name and slogans have changed. The libertarian money-aristocracy, the worship of mammon, wants to rule in the name of 'freedom' and to repress the powerless, that is: those without property. The old absolutism was at least honest, and ruled in the name of power and said openly: 'l'etat c'est moi!' ['I make the law.'] The libertarian money-aristocracy, on the other hand, formally recognizes the people's rights and says that it wants a government of laws, and that the representation of the people is the ultimate purpose of the state. Nevertheless, it claims to be the law of the people and the people's representative."

("Der Liberalismus ist also die Vertretung des Besitzes in der Herrschaft; das Recht, welches er verlangt, ist die Herrschaft des Geldes. In dieser Beziehung ist der Liberalismus die neue Aristokratie; ihr Inhalt ist derselbe mit der alten Aristokratie, nur ihr Name ist geaendert und ihr Panier. Die liberale Geldaristokratie, der Mammonismus will unter dem Firma der „Freiheit" herrschen und die Machtlosen, d. h. die Besitzlosen unterdruecken; der alte Absolutismus war wenigstens ehrlich, er herrschte auch unter der Devise der Gewalt und sagte offen: l'etat c'est moi! die Volksrechte habe ich. Die liberale Geldaristokratie aber erkennt die Rechte des Volkes, ein Recht des Rechtstaates, an, will nach ihren Worten den wahren Rechtsstaat herstellen, indem sie die Volksvertretung als den ureigentlichen Zweck des Staates hinstellt, sagt aber nichtdestoweinger, dass sie selbst die Volksvertretung, das Recht des Volkes, sei.")

What's that, a manifesto written after the 2007-2008 worldwide financial crisis and the huge bailouts of financial firms? No, it's older than that. 1930's Great Depression socialism? Nope. It was written in 1846 by Ernst Dronke, one of the original Commies, a German who occasionally rubbed shoulders with Karl Marx, and who like Marx spent the last several decades of his life in exile in England. Some of this original Commie stuff really holds up, really stays fresh, unfortunately. Unfortunately, because the goals of people like Dronke and Marx are not much closer to being realized than they were in the 1840's.

Maybe they're at least becoming more comprehensible to more people. In the light of long and ever longer experience of the problems they describe.