A nice trick for understanding economics is to factor out money. An economy is just a bunch of people doing stuff that keeps the system going. The strength of an economy is the overlap between what's necessary to keep it going, and what people want to do anyway. By this definition, a weak economy has to threaten people with hunger and homelessness to get them to do their jobs, and at the other extreme, Utopia doesn't even have the concept of freeloading.

This has actually been done. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers mentions tribes where some people do no productive work their whole lives, and nobody cares. Obviously not every tribe has done it, but even if it's just one, that tells us that it's possible.

In a complex high-tech society, the challenge is distribution, getting stuff to people who aren't making stuff. Communism tried it through central management, which didn't work, and capitalism is trying it through money, which is now also failing. I think the failure of capitalism is a slip between two functions of money: 1) a mechanism of exchange, and 2) a source of the meaning of life.

The problem is, money is zero-sum. If you hang meaning on it, then meaning is zero-sum, and it gets sucked up by people at the top. The poor become NPC's in the quests of the rich.

That system is now breaking down. Human motivation is the most powerful force on the planet, and as the economy collapses, there is more and more human motivation languishing, waiting to be tapped.

Unlike life partners -- what we consider to be soul-mate relationships or "the one" -- twin flame relationships are intense and challenging relationships that force us to deal with our unresolved issues and, through trials, tribulations, and breakthroughs, become a bigger person. Because of this intensity, it's uncommon for twin flames to be a lifelong partnership. Rather, they are people who enter your life for a period of time to help you grow and steer you on course. "It is common for those relationships to separate because they are very difficult to maintain."

From Ask Reddit, What's the strangest interaction you've had with an animal that made you rethink their intelligence?

A short Reddit thread, Can you point me toward any of the times that Alan Watts talked about the squares who are the most caught up in samsara as the most "far out"?

Now, ordinarily we say someone's very far out when they are oddballs, when they are exceedingly unconventional. But I want you to turn the picture 'round and look, as a conventional person, look at a square as a person who's very far out. That is to say, he is so involved in the seriousness of the game he is playing that he is lost.

Related, a thread on the Psychonaut subreddit about the cosmic joke: "We spend our entire life trying to make ourselves whole and when we die we figure out that we were always whole we just wanted to feel broken."

And some music. My 2010s Spotify playlist was long, disjointed, and missing too many good songs. So I moved the loudest songs plus the new stuff to a new playlist, 2010s vol 2. My momentary favorite (via YouTube) is Amen Dunes - Lonely Richard, one of the best psych folk songs of the century.

Google Is Not What It Seems. Julian Assange writes about being interviewed by some people from Google who appeared to be politically neutral, but they turned out to be representing the American foreign policy establishment, and he argues that Google has been allied with these people and their world view for a long time:

By all appearances, Google's bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment of the "benevolent superpower"... This is the impenetrable banality of "don't be evil." They believe that they are doing good.

If you think about this, it puts a twist on the popular idea that the elite simply rule the world. On a deeper level, the world is ruled by the stories the elite have to tell themselves to feel like they're the good guys. These stories include: that global-scale decisions must be made from the top (or center); that political stability is more valuable than political participation; and that anything you can call "economic development" is good.

But the story I find most interesting, is that you raise the quality of life of ordinary humans by taking away their pain and giving them stuff. I'm thinking what people really want is interesting choices -- partly inspired by Sid Meier's famous definition of a game as a series of interesting decisions, and partly by an email I got more than a year ago from Owen:

In game design, they talk about choices that matter. If a choice is presented but people feel obligated to take only one of the branches, that's not really a choice. You must take this option, taking that other option is stupid. Or if taking a branch doesn't result in any perceived consequence. Then take any branch, the choice doesn't matter. They put those kinds of choices in front of you all the time. How do you like your steak cooked? Should I use the gelpacks or the powder for the dishwasher?

This is important so I'll say it again in my own words. If the choice doesn't effect your path, like Coke or Pepsi, then it's not interesting; and if one choice is obviously stupid, like keep your car on the road or run it off, then it's not interesting. But deprive people of interesting choices for too long, and they start making the obviously stupid choice just to feel alive. Another way to say it: we would rather do the wrong thing that we choose ourselves, than the right thing that is chosen for us. I think this explains a lot of behavior that otherwise doesn't make any sense, and it's why even the most benevolent central control can never make a good society.

Because in our day, education simply for the sake of education was a good and desirable thing. Colleges used to have the goal of turning out well-rounded citizens and no education was ever "wasted" because being educated - no matter the degree - was considered an objectively good thing. There were a lot of ways to contribute to society no matter what your degree was.

Now colleges are nothing more than job training programs churning out cogs for the machine, and have no interest in education for its own sake. Society no longer values an intelligent and well-rounded citizenry, either. In a culture where everything is monetized, most degrees will be "useless" if they're not strictly utilitarian.

Related, from two years ago, a very well written comment about the causes of the political troubles in America. The comment below it is less correct but more interesting: "The factories moving to low-cost countries has resulted in poverty for people who cannot wrap their heads around poverty not being caused by a moral failing, and it's driving them crazy."

Finally, from the Spirituality subreddit, a cool thread about kids saying things that suggest awareness of a reality beyond this world. I wonder how far we could go with this, if it was encouraged in normal families.