“america”

I’m increasingly impressed and admiring of the vigor, originality, and sheer bravado of many Indian thinkers. (Venturesome Economy recent case in point.) The country with the most favorable opinion of America, India at its best out-Americas America as the country of hope, as in this breathtaking reaction to the Mumbai attacks (referred by an Indian commentator as the Indian 9/11).

Virginia Postrel back to writing with a vengeance. Here my favorite of her latest essays. Most liked the comparison between simple economic hypotheses, cleverly verifiable, and the “unfalsifiable tautologies about differing tastes” all around us. (Such straightforward, plain-language hypotheses pretty much the only subset of economics that feels real to me.)

In record turnouts, 40% of eligible voters don’t vote. In other words, 60% of Americans don’t vote (because they can’t or won’t). Was thinking of something cool and snarky to answer that excellent celebrity video that’s making the ‘Tube rounds, but really, what need is there?

A lot of people, most on at least one count, aren’t wasting their time already. Some of the best propaganda in the world (the envy of any dictator), none for the cases against voting (1, 2, 3... just imagine if a true don’t vote ad went national—child porn would cause less mayhem), and yet so many still do what makes sense. Can’t really do anything for the rest. What I’ll do is humor the naive we all carry inside, do the simplest thing that could have some impact, this post, and move over to more productive stuff.

And please, please, were you a democra-zealot (good-natured pun, crazy, get it? :), take this not as a challenge to double your efforts, I’m truly saddened by all the misspent electoral effort as it is. Instead, why not make something you want happen that doesn’t need to (attempt to) change everyone else? As I’ll try doing now, over and out.

Published the day after the towers fell, this the finest thing I’ve read on 9/11: Harry Browne’s When will we learn?

I still remember how impressive Lehman Brothers’ New York headquarters were…

The plan is to travel, to go places for a year or so, to live for some 2-3 months each time, in Tokyo, Barcelona/Madrid, London, and Toronto (in that order). Both Spain and Canada beckon with legal, short paths to free agency. The goal shall be to find out which city I like better as my fulcrum for the decade, but mostly to learn, to start projects, and to swallow the world.

I didn’t expect to like working remotely so much, as I’ve been doing this last couple of weeks, but I’ve loved the freedom, the flexibility, and the discipline it imposes. Most important of all, it allows for freedom of place and having been kicked out of the U.S. I might as well look around. So I’m looking for some sort of remote job, failing that savings and odd jobs would have to do, but having an unhinged fixed job would accelerate and catalyze everything.

There is, still, the possibility that there will be no place for me like Silicon Valley. If that’s so, then I’ll try to get a tourist visa again within a year and give de facto (ilegal) free agency another shot. I doubt, though, that they’ll grant me a visa, but there are many other, safe, if somewhat expensive means, to get inside. And once inside de facto free agency is not far fetched at all. I’m heartened by the sanctuary San Francisco itself always was for me (as opposed to the dastard federal gov’t).

But that’s just one possibility. Just having done that scenario planning comforts me and sets me free. The world beckons and Japan has always been, after America, the country I’m hungriest for. I’ve always wanted to try the sink or swim approach to learning a language! It’ll take me a month or two to get there, but just you wait Tokyo!

But why wasn’t I legally in the States? Because there are no certain legal paths to what I want: free agency. That is, to be able to live and make wealth, however and how long I want (the legal equivalent would be a permanent residence, a citizenship is that plus voting).

Sure, there are work visas, but I’m not particularly interested in being an employee. I want to make wealth myself or with others, in projects we start. And yes, a work visa can (notice the lack of certainty!), given years, be upgraded to a residence permit—I know a couple of tech guys who have done this after some 7 or more years. It takes that long because professional green cards have a shameful 5 year backlog and because why would employers give you the freedom to work for others or for yourself when they can just have you on a renewable per-year indentured servitude?

The problem’s not getting into the States to vacation work where the powers that be want you to work, the problem is being a free agent. And yes, were America the only option, paying the many-year uncertain penance wouldn’t look so bad. But the world’s a big place.

Final part of Stunde Null, following Part 1 and Part 2

As I would better learn the next morning, the detention center was a nice, non-descript government building in the middle of, get this, upper-middle-class Phoenix suburbia. They take, though, such care in camouflaging that I doubt many neighbors know right next door illegal aliens are being held captive.

They searched me again, and again for weapons. They took away my book. Cops where white, some Hispanic, one of them had some arm-covering tattoos, San Francisco style. A bus was being loaded with a throng of short, tiny, Latin Americans of obvious illegality and indigenous roots, people whom you can tell just by looking that they have never eaten meat on a regular basis, faces and bodies eaten away by poverty and disease. They weren’t treated badly, what I saw was the same detached professionalism afforded to me.

The sequel to Stunde Null, Part 1

Moreover, it made no game-theory sense for me to tell the truth. The only good outcome for me was getting scott free and however increasingly remotely, that was only possible if I kept lying. Everything else was pretty much the same bad outcome. So I just played the game as long as I could. Just as they also played intimidating and antagonistic as long as they had to.

So I was happy to discover that the same ability of abstraction that allows me to read or think or program for hours on end allowed me to detach from the whole thing and treat it as a game that I had probably already lost, so why not play it for fun now? And it was, indeed, in a bizarre sense, fun—flow.

Until they got into my computer (and my iPhone). That was the part that still angers and shames me the most. Anger, because my computer is not just a tool, as it is for my father say; it is as intimate and integral a part of me as my neocortex and I felt just as violated as if they could read my thoughts and stare at my naked psyche. Shame, because I should have known better, I should have been more careful. Because I know how to protect and hide a computer (they were barely computer literate themselves, I was almost helping them troubleshoot their crappy system afterwards). I had read Little Brother for crying out loud. I should have known better.

Yesterday:

The window on the plane to Phoenix, the first stop of the trip to SF, showed the most stunning (and varied) cloud vistas I’ve ever seen: puffy, chunky, grape-y over the ocean, specks and daubs, strips and archs… We were very late yet just in time to the most spectacular, glaring sunset I can recall. The terrain was flatter than paved and the rare mountain or wrinkle were surreal, engulfed in a 3d-program plane of flatness or marred by veins that were rivers and lakes. I saw city-piercing highways from above for the first time and they were majestic and car choked. The street grid was perfect and every house had a pool. I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d look at the States in years.