Catching Up — Caught Up

A short while (from a week to three weeks) ago, I passed a few milestones without noticing. That I've only just noticed testifies to how unimportant those milestones really are, and also to the kind of comments I do notice and think about. Here are two examples.

Many of my clothes have turned ten years old. I know this because I used to think about tailoring that would last, and got a lot of pieces done. I had no idea they'd last this long. And they still fit well, perhaps even better now that they've subtly shifted to accommodate my frame.

My income has quietly reached my average annual income for the past five years, but in only eight months. That's strange, because I don't recall working harder. And I haven't raised my charges either.

I am very thankful. This is not a milestone. I am grateful all the time, and I give thanks because I am.

Poor

For a while now, I've known that my personal income is below the national median income. That is, more than half the population that is earning anything is getting more than I am. But I have also realised something else. I'm comfortable with it.

By comfortable, I don't mean that I have a sort of 'poverty = piety' thing. I mean that I don't envy people with more, and I always have money I can afford to give away. I still wear shirts I bought ten years ago (and am glad I still fit comfortably in them) and many of my other clothes date back just as much.

I eat sparingly. The other day, I calculated that I could live on an average of $20 a day if I wanted 'luxury'. However, my typical daily expenditure, were I to purchase everything I ate myself, would come to about $3.00 for breakfast, $0.50 for lunch, $3.00 for dinner, and $3.00 for 'luxuries' such as extra coffee, a piece of dark chocolate, and suchlike. Call it $10. The most 'expensive' items in the menu would be fish and fortified cereal.

By far my greatest day-to-day expenditure, unfortunately, is reading material. I am quite sure this comes to $20 a day as well. I can afford to cut down, I guess.

The greatest financial burden I have is the regular outlay on things like insurance premiums, taxes, fees. I find that the comforts of living in a reasonably civilised environment result in general taxation which does make a fair dent.

I have no right to be so blessed with what I have. I sometimes remind myself I have no right to have so much to be happy about. And I laugh, and dispose of more income. No, I'm not poor at all.

An Hourly Wage

Some time ago, I joined the ranks of the hourly-rated workers, one of the many elderly who while away their time in minor episodes between bouts of extreme excitement and terror. The life of an hourly-rated worker is a difficult one; you only earn wages for each hour of work completed.

This means that you don't draw a salary for doing nothing. A long time ago, I observed that if I were ill, sub-par, or otherwise temporarily incapacitated, I would continue to draw a salary which I did not deserve. This was a perk of the inefficiency of the workplace. Some people I knew, despite being hopelessly incompetent, nevertheless continued to draw a healthy draught of cash from the circulatory system of the world.

Nowadays, a sore throat or a strained back, and my earnings are somewhat curtailed. This gives me a huge incentive to stay healthy. It also inspires me to look for other projects and assignments — tasks to which I can turn my resources (which a few nice people tell me are sometimes formidable, sometimes even intimidating) and my interests, with some advantage.

Despite such difficulties, I am happy. At least I now know I am earning a fair wage and not being a parasite on the body of the masses, unlike some people. At the same time, I feel for those of my former colleagues and peers who, despite working hard and well, do not receive the emoluments nor recognition for a job well done.

Ah well. I am off to earn some wages now.

Monetization

There's this little tab on my dashboard that says [MONETIZE]. It's one of those things that reminds me about the pattern of the world. If you do anything, it's an economic activity. If you cash it in, it's called 'monetization', which means making money out of something (no, it doesn't mean forging French impressionist paintings).

The other word I've had to become familiar with is 'marketization'. My supervisor has spent many years investigating the marketization of Atlantean (and Lemurian) education. Essentially, education is no longer a public good provided from a common fund, but something to be hawked about, like bolts of cloth or whores at a brothel. You have to advertise. You have to promise all kinds of nebulous and enticing services. You have a stake in the marketplace of ideas, and ripping off other people's ideas is just one possible strategy.

In Atlantis, everything is monetized and marketized. The latest thing is kidneys. You can now legally accept inducements and bribes to sell a kidney.

I have no fears that this is a slippery slope though. It is more like a steep staircase down which somebody will likely fall and break his neck, thus at one fell stroke donating all his organs and miscellaneous body parts to the common good. It isn't a slippery slope because a live patient can only donate so many parts before ceasing to live. Skin and blood can be donated and they will regenerate, but until you develop a regen-drug for kidneys and livers and spleens and suchlike, similar organ harvesting will not happen — and if such a regen-drug is available, why should it happen?

What I fear (well not really, since I fear very little) is that people will note that you can now legally get lots of loot for selling a kidney, and that there probably isn't much percentage in allowing your parts (post-mortem) to go to the common pool. You might as well tell your family to keep your organs for the highest bidder, thus voiding your need for life insurance. Now, when Papa passes, you can sell all his parts and get far richer than by claiming his piddling little insurance — especially in these days when insurance companies seem to be decaying faster than such body parts.

Such is the pattern of the world. Wait for it. It will come to pass.

Cashing In

Today marks the 25th day of my new financial policy. Since St David's Day, I've decided to spend only as much money as finds its way into my wallet by direct physical transfer. If I need to use a Mammon Machine (also known as an Altar Teller), I restrict myself to using it only on the day after I have banked in a cheque that will more than cover the amount I'm withdrawing.

So far, I'm still at a nett positive income. And I have not touched the principal sum that I set aside since 2007. At current expense rates, this is likely to last me for the rest of my life. Hopefully, insurance will cover the healthcare that I'll need as I grow older.

But it's the little things that I realise are beginning to build up. When I go into a shop and pay for goods worth $27.64, for example, they charge me $27.60 in cash. If I had paid by electronic means, that would have been four cents more. Exact sums can be transacted by electronic means; but ever since they got rid of pennies, they have had to round down in favour of the customer.

Slowly, I am finding myself richer than I was before, even in these distressing times. I am beginning to set aside a sum for the education of future generations not my own. This was the habit of my ancestors, and I have resolved to make it mine as well. Education is important; in every school ever built to house wyverns, my family has planted at least one classroom and one teacher. It is too bad that the traditions of the School are fading and the flagship is at half-mast.

But the best is yet to be; and the prudent amongst us should endeavour that this best can be paid for in the end.

Relative Hardness

There is a famous anecdote about Voltaire and a whinger. The latter complained to the philosopher, "Life is hard!"

Voltaire replied, "Compared to what?"

It's an interesting reply, and one worth worrying about. It's possible to compare life to life in some ways. But what I've been thinking is that if you're a university student, you're already in the top 10% of the world's population. There simply aren't many people being educated in universities as a percentage of the world's masses.

One estimate of the current enrollment of students worldwide at the tertiary level is 150 million. Compared to the total world population of about 6.8 billion, that's 2.2% of the world. The current enrollment is the highest it's ever been; one forecast says that at this rate, India alone will need 2400 new universities to educate all those who might meet the current criteria for entry to a university.

It's probably quite accurate to say also that the top 2% of the world's population owns about 50% of the world's assets; that's what this UN study claimed about the world in the year 2000. The same study points out that if you had US$2,200 worth of assets, that made you richer than the average human being; US$61,000 would have put you in the top 10%.

My conclusion is that if you are debt-free (or tolerably so) and own a house or apartment in an alpha or beta world city (or you are a member of a small family that owns one), and if you also have a university education or are a university student, then you are blessed beyond any kind of complaint you might want to make.

SG Wages

I was watching a phenomenon last night. There was a young man, certainly not an investment broker but with the sort of income and tastes that you might associate with one. He was dressed in a blue outfit, not his usual one, and looked rather harassed, as if he had come home one day to find that all his leather shoes had turned to sandals.

Out of idle curiosity, I decided to see if my memories of his chosen sporting environment were correct. Yes, indeed; this young man named 'SG' was paid approximately £120,000 a week; which works out to about £17,300 a day. It is a mindboggling figure. If you were to type it into the little Google window and convert it to SG dollars, that would be about SGD 40,000 a day.

It put me in mind of a certain unsavoury incident that SG was involved in. Apparently, he was accused of participation in the sort of thing young men get up to when soused, and carted off to the local nick. The amount of income SG would have earned for 3 days in jail would have been 120,000 in SG dollars, just for sitting at Her Majesty's convenience for a while. I'm sure his fellow detainees would have been in awe.

These days, it seems that the wages of being a good ball-kicker are far greater than anything a conventional education might bring. That said, watching SG perform in his chosen colours, or even in his away kit (which makes him look as if he is from the other team in town), is an education all of its own. He is a great sportsman, even on a reasonably bad day; and in mitigation, there are about ten other sportsmen in his field who are paid more than he is throughout the world.

Dirty Big Service

In my country there is a bank, neither bonny nor related to Loch Lomond. However, it is a dirty big service provider with intimate ties (like a corset) to the nation. What is appalling is (to follow the train of thought begun in my previous post) that this large bank has apparently switched over to some new software. Some people have not had their accounts credited promptly, others have been sent letters saying that their loan installments have not been paid on time.

It happened to my father recently. I was most surprised; he's not the sort to be late with payments. We scrambled to pay up. The bank sent another letter. We were a little alarmed. We opened the letter. It was an apology for the previous letter, which had been 'sent out by mistake'.

The roots of the matter are complex. Suffice it to say that the more interactions are available, the more possibilities for chaos exist. Where the space of interaction is limited, the severity of chaotic effect in terms of impact on the interacting entities will be large. As the number of entities and possible interactions multiplies out of control, the only way to have a functional polity is to censor the available information and interactions.

I'm reading Charles Stross's intelligent and dynamic Glasshouse right now. Almost done. What struck me in a few pages was that the world Stross writes about, in which historians are targeted by assassins and revisionism is a system-wide disease carried by humans, is very much like the world I live in. Except that Glasshouse is also about an experiment in living like we do, from the perspective of a future generation in the more-distant future (well, after the Acceleration, that is).

My country is a microcosm of the Strossian universe. I read Stross and think about how he would be so at home here. We should get him in as expatriate talent. He could be our chronicler. Haha.

An Unusual Journeying (Part 3)

What I tell you three times is true, says the old formula beloved of fairy-tales. And so, here is the third and last 'fit' as Lewis Carroll might have said.

I have no discernible fear of death. I have a list of things I think I fear; here are some of them: pain, torture, prolonged awareness of incapacity, the debilitation of disease and old age, the loss of loved ones in an untimely and/or senseless-seeming way.

Over the years, I have discovered that the material rewards of an attitude which does not cling to this life are great. They are not positive material rewards (free cars, extra loot, a larger house) but rewards in the breach; these are rewards which make material things less inviting.

The first of these rewards is peace of mind. A major source of anxiety seems to be removed when someone is without a fear for the ending of life. Does it really matter what a person does to you? Yes, it might and often does; but it might matter less when you realise that he is for the maggots as much as you, that some things can be easily laughed off because they are not even as frightening as death. You can afford to take the long view and realise that if you were to die that night, a lot of things would shift in significance and value. You can afford to be at peace with yourself and with others.

The second of these rewards is contentment. When you have peace of mind, you can be content – and happy with what you have to live on. I know my work is worth a lot more than I'm paid. But it does not matter at all. It is enough that I have the tools of my work and the ability to relax and enjoy them. You can take act towards goals: contentment is not necessarily immobility, inertia, incapacity or lack of desire to do something new and different. But you can decide firmly that enough is enough, sit down and stick to your own mission statement.

The last of these rewards is a sense of perspective. [It's hard to define that, but the link I've just given might help. Heh.] Investing recently with a friend of mine, I was a little surprised to find that he rated me at the high-end of risk-taking. I asked him why. He said that my answers to his questions had shown that I really did not care if I lost the entire "fortune" that I had invested with him. He's right. If a man can live on less than $300 a month (as some people say), then a man who earns $1.2m a year certainly has more than enough. That man is now able to give away at least $1m a year. It is probably true that few such people do, because they might have forgotten how to survive on $200k a year, let alone $3600 a year with no bonuses. I make less than $100k a year myself, but I am extremely aware that that puts me in the top 10% of all the world's people (I think you need about US$60,000 for that).

Ah, take time to delight in life while you have it! It's the one online game you can really play in character. While the penalties for character death seem awful for an online game, bear in mind that leaving your computer to have dinner can be a good idea. Peace, contentment, a sense of perspective - what great gifts I have received!