PsycHHology Engineering: Know Thyself. You can’t Actualize the Unknown—what does AFFORDABILITY mean to yu (that is, me):
Affordability has a reason part and an emotional part: I try to use the reason part as same is often defined for us by Objectivists, either from Ayn Rand herself or other Professional Objectivists ...
Affordability –like all normative concepts--has a reason part and an emotional part: I try to use the reason parts of these things as same are often defined for us by Objectivists, either from Ayn Rand herself—link this—or other Professional Objectivists and/or (as in “even”) other Objectivist sympathizers—some that is, for sure not all. For one Professional one see Dr. Harry Binswanger in this case—link here.
One reason to use Objectivists for reason parts is because they are the best when it comes to spending the time required to get correct, precise—cognitively objective--definitions for important terms (something itself that is extremely important). And you can save a certain amount of time by consulting them—as I have done in the past and will continue doing in the future.
But with one caveat. Try really really hard to refer to reality directly and define on your own first—that is, DO NOT succumb to using the Dictionary at first--as you try to make your understanding match reality and then check against the professionals—unless you feel confident in your due diligence--or if you have too hard a time consult them and the dictionary part-way through your effort rather than give up. (Unless, like me, you want to wait a few days—or hours: three minimum in either case depending on the size of the knowledge you seek—and then try again and in.the.doing notice that the Spiral Learning Theory of Knowledge works and makes sense. That is, read my stuff every day and every day you’ll learn something new.)
But for the emotional parts of cultural war weaponry—that is, the part that really matters here inside Substack writing—one has to go to one’s own emotional self to ferret out personal meaning of terms—word weapons—used by self and others in the attempts to persuade others--as well as self as sometimes is the case.
The goal is to understand self and have others contribute comments to one’s errors—if any—as they often want to do.
Or if all you want is for people to comment on your Substack posts, write stuff that is sooooo’oh cfuk’g stupid that even Democrats could see it, and you’ll get all the comments you can handle.
For case in point.
Yu mean, soooo’oh stupid case?
No. I mean case involving:
What AFFORDABILITY means to me.
To me affordability means that when I was 22 years old (1968) and started paying back my college loan, the amount I owed in comparison to my first Engineering Job with General Electric Aerospace division was in the ratio of my annual income to amount owed was about 4.5 to 1. (I owed $2000 and made $9000 my first year out of MIT—Minnesota Institute of Technology. Yes, I love doing this every opportunity I get.)
My understanding today is that this ratio is almost reversed for kids today—though reversed is a bit hyperbolic. It’s not completely so such that even the extent of my working part time to subsidize my college self can’t account for the difference.
Or at least this is what I believe—rather this is what the emotional part of me “feels” on this topic.
I believe that the reason College costs so much today versus back in my day is because there was a Professor-Government Complex that evolved—rather quickly—from the Government getting evermore involved in money borrowing for dumbass (read young) people who thought they would be able to get work upon graduating and could afford to pay it back over time with no more than normal difficulty. (That is, my 4.5 to 1 ratio was normal difficulty, but its reverse is indentured slave difficulty. And no, I don’t think young folks think it funny that CINO’s are laughing all the way to the bank.)
The countries “intellectuals” told young people that a college degree was their way to the American dream of a life of gainful employment and a life much like that of many of their parents—with this big lie: kids in America—the greatest non-CINO Capitalistic Country of all time (this is the lie part)--will always find an American Society within which they can do better than their parents.
So Yes, it’s easy to see how they were so readily—and easily—duped by their elders.
The fact that this American Dream was the same way for me and was so achieved by me—in retrospect, it—is easy to see because my family and many like me back then were so f’g poor it didn’t take all that much to “do better.”
But today since the CINO’s (kws same) have managed to take all of the wealth created since 1968—that is, why do the 1%’ers own all the assets in the country and the 99%’ers all the debt?
I actually know the answer to this seemingly rhetorical question, click here for it.
As to other such emotional “affordability” things in my craw, when I was 15 years old earning 50 cents an hour (half the minimum wage then was best I could do at the time, though I soon got 75 cents and then a year later a buck an hour) I remember I had to choose between buying a pack of cigarettes (around 25 cents) or a gallon of gas about the same or perhaps a tiny bit more.
So back then, 1 hour of kid labor – many made minimum wage – could buy 4 packs of cigarettes or 4 gallons of gas—or one pack of cigarettes and three gallons of gas.
Today this 1 pack to 1 gallon ratio has increased from 1 to 1 to almost 4 to one so that 1 hour of kid labor—say ten bucks an hour—could buy 1 pack of cigs and no gas or 4 gallons of gas and no cigs so that ... so that ... what?
Alls I know is that back in my day when me and my girlfriend finished parking—having been able to get to the country with three gallons of gas so we could get back home too--we each could enjoy the cig afterword—today I don’t know what kids ... wait ... I have no clue whatsoever what 15 year old boys and girls do today so I have no comment on this.
But I do have questions.
For all my ratios to change so drastically over my life was concerning in that it made it very difficult to think about the value of my values.
Why is that?
I do remember though that ratios seemed to hold for much longer than they do today.
When did it change?
Why did it change?
Are such ratios meaningful or not?
That is, who says they should stay the same, or at least more stable?
Actually, I am going to say it as I now am thinking about what it meant to me to solve Engineering problems related to my specialty field of Heat Transfer—as I got better and better at my job I took it for granted that the heat transfer coefficients, heat transfer formulas and the like—that I had automatized and used to think with--not only didn’t change they stayed the same for the all of my quarter century career—I didn’t have to readjust almost continuously for the rulers and yardsticks of my profession changing what they stood for: a ruler was 12 inches and a yardstick 36 and an inch was an inch today and tomorrow.
Why should money--dollar as a standard yardstick for our money, originally = 24 inches, oops; I mean 24 grams of silver--change so drastically and especially go down so much and not act the same as a measure of value over a long time period.
Point is, it should and is the biggest scam yet pulled on us peons.
More affordability.
When I was 11 years old—the year my older brother, may he rest in peace, taught me how to inhale (he denied it, but it was true I still have the gNFI – kws same - to remember it)--and was setting pins at my local pool hall for 10 cents a game that ....
Enough. Stop. Wrap it up.
Affordability’s emotional part means:
Now that you have discovered it we think that you should not think that the solution is to restrict the political freedoms of smart people, but rather that the solution is ... stop being dumb.
To explore this further our investigative reporter, JJ (Jake Jackson) interviewed one ex-dumb person whom we call GD for short (we do this so that we won’t get sued by using his real name, Gary Deering).
JJ: How did you first discover that about smart people?
GD: Well it was back in the first part of the second half of the last century.
Jake: 1950’s?
GD: No. More like the early ‘70’s.
Back then, when Ayn Rand said to me, ~ I am standing at the deathbed of your mind, the thing that is killing you is etc and so on ... ~ (p. 1027 Hardcover), I sat bolt upright in bed.
And listened.
Then in less time than it takes to get an undergraduate Degree in theology I was able to save myself from my would be controllers--be they of the personal, individual kind or of the BM government et al Institutional/Group--that is, the T.h.e.y/T.h.e.m (page 112) -- kind.
Saving myself has been so much fun that I wished I could communicate it to you, but alas, it--like sex-- can’t be communicated, it can only be experienced.
For example, if I said to the neophyte you Jake, “Take that thing hanging between your legs, find a woman and insert it in that frontal hole between her legs”, you would probably say, why? to what purpose? it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal to me.
But of course, if you aren’t such a neophyte, but rather old enough to have already experienced such insertions you’d know just what a big deal it is.
Well in like fashion, if I said to you, take that thing dangling between your ears and use it to fill all the holes in your illogic, you would probably say why? to what purpose? it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal to me.
But of course, if you aren’t such a neophyte, but rather old enough to have already experienced such insertions you’d know just exactly what a biggie deal it is.
Well-
JJ: Wait just a ‘dul garn minute here Deering, what are you trying to say? That reason is a whore who will do it with anybody who pays the price?
GD: Well ...
sort of ...
if by price, JJ, you mean time and effort to develop your ability to reason, just like you might develop your ability to run or jump or excel in some sport, if this JJ then yes, if by whore you mean when you are
transitioning from a low level of reason-ableness to a higher level and you observe and admire a really high degree of reason-capableness in others and you get jealous of it, then yes JJ, if by whore you mean
in the sense-of-life sense-of-the-movie Pretty Woman, then: Yes ...
it is possible for your (inner) ego to feel:
“Oh Reason, thou art a whore.”
But, it is a fleeting moment and just one area in your mental life where you can use your feelings-of- jealousy to tell you what you are really interested in.
As opposed to your superficial interests, which we all seem to have but which do not have to dominate the T hinking F eeling A cting j udging us.
But of course JJ that part--thinking most about what matters most versus thinking most about what matters least, that part JJ--is up to you.
Pebble #1:
So, what does affordability mean?
Ans: It’s as Harry B said: an anti-concept.
For your emotional part you’ll have to check in with the innner yu to find the answer because you are the only one who can do it.
That is, you are the only one who can identify all your self-facts: they come from your inside world, not other’s insides.
If you are afraid to discover who you are—who you really are--this might help you overcome your own limitations in doing so.
© January 6, 2026, Gary Dean Deering
Minnesota, USA