asciilifeform: unlike columbus/indies, just about all people have experienced freedom (in the sense of not having to work) - as children
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: prisoners may have different reasons to want out of the jail, but that does not make freedom a 'figment of imagination' - there is actually a world outside of the jail.
asciilifeform: if you like to live in forest and eat tree bark - $0 can be
asciilifeform: such that, e.g., you can lose 90% of the principal and remain fuckyou-enabled
asciilifeform: but one could redefine 'fuck you' with an engineering margin
asciilifeform: its fuck you money only until its not << yes, generally how fiat works
asciilifeform: people with even an elementary brain do understand that perhaps one in a thousand can be a rentier
asciilifeform: 'fuck you money' is a very real item for which folks have a very real longing - because in fact, it is simply the desire to be released from workschwitz and arbeit macht frei.
asciilifeform: to abuse mathematical parlance, bumhood is a 'degenerate case'
asciilifeform: well it has a meaning - most folks aren't bums, and possibly don't even inhabit a mental space where bums exist (other than in the vaguely 'doomy' sense that death exists for them)
asciilifeform: and most of the speakers are not street bums, and so aren't sitting on a floor one cannot fall through
asciilifeform: 'fuck you money,' if i recall, has the following etymology. the idea that if you came into $fuckyou, you could utter 'fuck you' to the boss at the plant tomorrow, and continue to live at least as well (consumption) as presently, indefinitely
asciilifeform: Adlai: afaik, as with most soviet crackpots, no translation to english exists
asciilifeform: who argued, almost convincingly, that cannibalism shaped all of human history (e.g., fire was discovered to fight the cannibal half of humanity, who then morphed into sc4mz0rs or the like)
asciilifeform: Adlai would be pleased to read the works of soviet academician Porshnev
asciilifeform: decimation: this, i think, was repealed.
asciilifeform: decimation: i once learned, to great surprise, that as late as '70s i'd quality for an instant lieutenant if joined american army - all you needed was an ordinary uni degree (4 yrs.)
asciilifeform: in usa, 'private' is rank of the cannon fodder man, fresh off the street
asciilifeform: tomorrow - the spiderwebs clear away. no dogs
asciilifeform: today - col. x won't blow away wh because he has an imaginary retirement with hunting dogs and cocksuckresses living in the spiderwebby recesses of his balding skull.
