7 years
On this day 7 years ago, my family came to the US. Most people don't realize how awesome this country is. They point at its 'failures' not realizing what the word "failure" means on a global scale. "First world problems" are really 3rd order problems. You only start worrying about them once you have optimized your first and second orders. And any stem major knows that once you got the first 2, you put a big O(x^3) and call it a day. What is so different about US? Geographical location and resourceful land are certainly important, but more importantly, it is the philosophical foundation. Founders ran from authoritarianism and hoped that they could build a stable society without the need for a monarch. This is a really tough and counter-intuitive task. Stability without a fixed source of truth? Without a single person making the final decision? Damn! And somehow, they made it work. They achieved stability and prosperity by preventing the power from accumulating in anyone's hands. This is what I call "disrupting the industry". Radical. They have also challenged the notion of "Rules for Thee but not for Me" . Many of the people I've talked to commonly argue for elitism without realizing it. When I argue against the necessity of religion, I often hear "Well, Ramil, obviously you and I *since we are so smart* don't need to believe in medieval fairytales, but what about those less educated folk?" When I argue for the Libertarian universal basic income, "Well, Ramil, obviously you and I know best what to do with our money, but what about those poor folk? We can't just give them cash, we have to give them food stamps and housing vouchers, etc." place holder fo the third example that happened yesterday which escapes me . So what? Are they wrong? They aren't wrong in acknowledging that people are different, but they wrongly conclude that the problems of the differential treatment aren't more dangerous. Anyway, to Sunday! Maybe I'll finally make the video.