That means spending time mostly on family and my local community. I have found it very rewarding to get involved in local organizations. I don't do grunt labor but I do serve on boards, and I am an active and involved member. If you have even minimal finance/legal/management/organizational skills you can help out a lot. Serving others is a great way to improve your mental health. Because I am financially able I also provide money to local causes where I am confident it will be productively leveraged and not wasted.

If you can bring yourself to believe in god it's a great help. Observing and learning about the natural world has convinced me beyond all doubt that it is a creation. I don't mean in the intelligent design sense, but that the initial conditions of the formation of the universe were specified by a designer. I have no idea if the designer hacks it from time to time, but the fact that there is a designer means there is something sentient greater than ourselves and that it's not just all some big random clusterfuck. Having this embedded in yourself as a guiding principle is 180.

It's extremely hard to live life alone. Having some family, friends, and business associates with whom you interact productively and pleasantly is really helpful.

I've also discovered that I can conceive, create and execute new things, whether it's a business or some kind of discrete project. There's a line from a song in the musical "Sunday in the Park with George" about a painter finishing painting a hat. He sings, "Now there is a hat where was no hat before." If you can create something it's immensely rewarding and satisfying.

Ridding yourself of toxic people is also wonderfully pleasing. Most of the ones I had as hangers on have removed themselves because they couldn't convert me to their fucked up ways of viewing the world. I'm talking mostly about extreme anti-natalist leftist types. For some reason I had a slew of those I had accumulated over the years. They all got TDS and finally decided they were going to socialist hell if they kept trying to win me over. The silence from that quarter is immensely pleasing.

I'm out of time. Pretty much a blather, but since you asked. I will have to wait until later to address jewry.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5749497&forum_id=2#49097575)

Some boards are unbelievably annoying. Those boards are usually do nothing rubber stamp boards and tend to be too big. Some boards (symphonies, etc.) are pay to play. If you're on the board you're expected to make substantial gifts. It's some kind of perceived status thing.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5749497&forum_id=2#49097745)

I think big public company boards are generally a sweet gig, unless some giant brouhaha erupts. I've had friends on big company boards who got caught up in time consuming litigation. Private boards are different. They usually have more insiders and outsiders are brought in for specific purposes.

During my 10 years working for bigcorp a recruiter told me that I was career fucked, and I think being fucked extended to board seats. He told me management of that particular company, and it was a big one, consisted of average bears, and that I was far to smart to play with them. Plus, he added, I was too short at 5'10". Most senior execs and board members were well over 6 feet. The CFO had been a pro basketball player. I was a great executive levle employee, but they were never going to let me into the most senior ranks.

I'd enjoy being on the Apple or Microsoft boards I am sure. Even GM. I'm just not in that league and at this point don't need or want the money. Most boards are interlocked with other boards. If there are n companies, each with an average of m board members, the total number of directors is a fraction of nm. I would guess 1/3 to 1/5. The Google AI has this to say:

There's no single, universally agreed-upon statistic for the exact number of unique individuals serving on public company boards. However, several data points and trends can help estimate this figure and illustrate the landscape of public company board membership:

Average Board Size: Across various indices, the average board size at public companies generally ranges from 9 to 12 directors. The S&P 500, for example, has an average board size of 10.8 directors.

Companies and Seats: In the Russell 3000 index, the average board size is around 9.2 directors. This would mean roughly 27,600 (3000 companies x 9.2 directors) total board seats within this index alone. If each of these seats were held by a different individual, there would be that many unique individuals. However, some directors serve on multiple boards.

Overboarding: Some directors serve on multiple boards, a practice sometimes referred to as "overboarding." Investor protection groups like Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommend limits on how many boards a single individual should serve on, noting that a CEO should not serve on more than three boards (including their own), while other directors can sit on up to five.

Board Diversity: Efforts to increase board diversity have highlighted the demographics of directors. For example, in 2023, women held 28% of board seats in the Russell 3000 and 32% in the S&P 500. Racially and ethnically diverse individuals hold 21% of board seats in the Russell 3000 and 25% in the S&P 500.

Conclusion

While there's no precise number, considering the average board size across thousands of public companies, and factoring in the practice of some individuals serving on multiple boards, the number of unique individuals serving on public company boards likely falls within the tens of thousands. The exact number would depend on the specific indices or universe of companies being considered, and how many individuals hold multiple board seats

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5749497&forum_id=2#49097859)

Please expound upon the "extreme anti-natalist leftist types".

As an aging millenial, how do you think the high percentage of aging single people or nochild couples are going to shape society?

If boomers are that bad, it makes me wonder what would happen when 50%+ of our generation never have children

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5749497&forum_id=2#49097644)

Low birth rates possibly mean economic decline which some countries will offset by encouraging immigration from countries with reproductive vigor. OTOH, employment is being disrupted by technology, and there may not be a need for so many workers in the future. We just need consumers. The only way to finance consumption is through wealth transfer. I'm guessing a guaranteed income is 20 years away in the US. That might pump birth rates. If we lose the working couple household as the mode, maybe people will have more kids.

My crystal ball is pretty cloudy on how this is all going to work out. Regardless of the details, I think that as usual in capitalist countries you want to own, not be an employee. In socialist countries you want to be part of the ruling class. If the US goes socialist, work for the government to stay alive. Once Trumpism fades I think the country is likely to go quickly onto a socialist track. My guess is that it's the preferred system for the younger folks, but I am so out of touch I am not confident in that thought.

This all makes me think of Edward Abbey, the environmental extremist and writer. He said there's nothing wrong with this country that reducing the population to 10 million wouldn't solve. Some of my anti-natalist friends are of the same mind. A funny aspect of them is that they are the least self sufficient people I know. They have to call the electrician to change a light bulb.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5749497&forum_id=2#49097798)

One day I hope to live in a world where there exists no neurotic worry about things people cannot affect... and people focus on creating stuff instead of merely consuming.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5749497&forum_id=2#49097748)