The Dissident Dad

Daniel Ameduri is the founder of the Newsletter Future Money Trends, where he has produced some of the most watched videos on the internet about liberty, inflation, gold, silver, and what he refers to as 'personal finance for doomers.' His first fictional video, "The Day the Dollar Died," has been watched by over 2.5 million people.

He considers himself a full time dad who works part time and has recently launched a new website called '28 Thousand Days' to help other individuals think for themselves and live the lives they choose, rather than using the road map the government and Wall Street have laid out for them.

The Dissident Dad – No TV for You!

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I am all about freedom of choice, with one exception: I am the TV Nazi in my house.

According to a 2013 report from Nickelodeon to its advertisers, children today are watching 35 hours of television a week! That’s like a full-time job. Heck, if TV watching was a job, these kids would qualify for Obamacare and a 401k employer match.

My first born didn’t watch TV for the first two years of his life. Today, he watches about 3 hours a week. The kids have access to the one TV in our home, for 1 movie a week with their grandpa, and two cartoons geared towards education, such as Leap Frog, Super Why, or a nature documentary. In addition to that, we probably watch about 30 minutes of YouTube videos, either educational videos or pranks in any given week. Sorry, but we just love watching a good prank – especially the Scary Snowman.

I’ve actively denied them TV and will continue to do so. As an anarchist-libertarian dad, I want to encourage freedom, the ability to think for yourself, and to help my kids pursue their passions. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t allow an elderly person with Alzheimer’s to enter a busy street alone, or a friend who is brain damaged to get behind the wheel of a car. As a father, I have to step in when it comes to my children and television.

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The Dissident Dad – 10 Things I Had to Unlearn That My Children Won’t

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This list could grow to 1,000 ideas, but I’ve kept it down to ten. In the future, I might update it and add some more.

There are a lot of bad ideas that dominate the world we live in today, most of which are uncritically accepted as the norm and fully embraced by society.

As a millennial myself, I’ve noticed my peers seem to accept most of these as conventional wisdom. Hook, line, and sinker.

Here are some ideas I was propagandized with that I hope my children will never have to “unlearn.”

1. Violence is normal.

Presidential candidates today are fighting over who can kill better by using drones or boots on the ground. By constantly threatening the use of violence against other countries, statists have conditioned the population into thinking that killing tens of thousands of people is normal behavior, instead of the immoral, dangerous provocation it is. Rather than being charged with murder, politicians and others that help support this behavior are often paid $250,000 or more a speech after they leave office, and referred to as Mr. President or former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Video games, movies, television shows, and even toys all have a common theme: death and destruction. For example, there’s nothing like teaching your child about policing in 2015 America via these Playmobil toys:

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The Dissident Dad – Rules for Not Being a Smartphone Zombie

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Watching a 12-year-old with an iPhone is like watching a hen peck away at a fresh handful of chicken scratch. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I mean, I’ve seen plenty of rude adults with no manners whatsoever when it comes to cell phones, but watching my niece last week took it to a whole new level. Like a zombie addict, she must have stared at that phone for hours and hours, only taking a break to plug her earphones in to get her iTunes going.

I’ve accepted the fact that for millennials and even baby boomers, there just aren’t smart phone manners. There are no guidelines, no generational precedent… just the two extremes when it comes to mobile device use: either someone is rude or they are not. All I can do is change my own behavior and set a gentlemanly example for my own children.

In my own household, once work is done, my phone either goes in a dresser drawer or is set to airplane mode. I know clients and family probably think I’m an idiot when it comes to responding to a text or answering the phone after business hours, but I have set my own cell phone guidelines. One of which is to never have my children talk to me while I’m starring at a little glass phone. Too many times have I been at a public park and seen children repeatedly trying to get their parents’ attention with little to no success, often getting no response from the parent or just a blank stare as they begrudgingly look up for a moment. Parents push the swing with one hand, and swipe away at Facebook with the other.

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The Dissident Dad – Michigan Proposes Bill to Require Official Visits to Parents Homeschooling Their Children

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The busybodies in Michigan have proposed a new bill directed at children who are homeschooled, which will require two annual home inspections and official state registration.

Stephanie Chang, a Michigan State Representative, is worried that homeschool parents will abuse their children while no one is watching. Apparently, the state wants to be the sole authority on child abuse; including indoctrination, a daily statist pledge for 5-year-olds, and the distribution of criminal records to teens who decide to smoke a plant.

Like dogs and sex offenders, the state wants children registered. As a result, thousands of decent and caring homeschool parents may soon be forced to allow an inspection of their family or be in violation of the law.

The tragedy the state is pointing to in order to push this bill is a 2012 case in which two homeschooled children were tortured, killed, and then left in a freezer by their mother. As tragic as this is, using it to create a new law to infringe on the privacy and sovereignty of 48,000 homeschooled children in Michigan is wrong.

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The Dissident Dad – Raising Independent Minded Children in America is Tough

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No joke, trying to raise an independent-minded, decent human being in America is like trying to fly through a Category 5 hurricane.

For starters, nothing beats some of the toys offered up to kids. For example, you can hone your child’s remote killing skills by buying him or her a military drone toy. Not only can you kill women and children in their homes, but you can do so without actually having to deploy overseas!

Teach your kids this valuable skill via the, Maisto Fresh Metal Tailwinds 1:97 Scale Die Cast United States Military Aircraft – US Air Force Medium Altitude, Long Endurance, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) RQ-1 Predator with Display Stand, available at Amazon:

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The Dissident Dad – Free Your Mind, Part 2

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Last week, I chose to take on a different tack and put together a list of 50 things to try instead of, or in addition to, going straight to college. It’s a lengthy list, so only the first 25 were posted last week. Here is the rest of the list:

26) Volunteer at a Zoo: Zoos contain a great wealth of information, and they’re an awesome place to volunteer. You get to meet other animal lovers, learn how animals are cared for (like bears and lions), and possibly even get to take part in their care yourself. It’s something very few people get to do!

27) Write Songs: Lyrically, songs take a bit of work. You’re working with both a beat and verbal flow, which requires a strong grasp of the English language (or another) and fitting things together. This makes it a strong creative outlet, and could even lead to a job writing lyrics for others.

28) Learn to Drive Race Cars: Most of us have had that desire to get behind the wheel of a race car and take it around the track. Or even just go on a drag strip. Learning how to drive a car in these extreme conditions requires great hand-eye coordination, and fast reflexes. But if you master it, you could actually get sponsored to drive cars!

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The Dissident Dad – Free Your Mind

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I was wiping off the dust from an old book that I read when I was just 15 years old. I thought I had lost it, but while cleaning out my garage, I discovered it at the bottom of a box, like buried treasure. This specific book changed my life. It was the key to everything my brain had told me was right, but I had never seen it in written words. The book was “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” by Robert Kiyosaki. First self-published in 1997, somehow I got lucky and a friend who was in his 30s gave it to me as a gift.

Upon opening up this book that I hadn’t touched in 18 years, written in my handwriting was “free your mind.” It was a statement of faith I had declared to myself as a young man.

Since last fall, I’ve been writing Dissident Dad posts weekly, focusing on my personal struggle to raise 3 children in an environment where the America we were all told about and learned to love is completely in the past. It’s a totally foreign nation to anyone residing in the current police state run by an insane group of oligarchs, multinational corporations and lunatics in D.C.

Today, I want to change it up a bit and reach out to any young adults reading this post, or perhaps parents who are raising teenagers. With daily stories about college-aged kids being overwhelmed with debt and irrelevant degrees for today’s economy, I wanted to put together a list of 50 alternatives to going to college.

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The Dissident Dad – I Recently Spanked My Son and I Feel Like a Hypocrite

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Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 10.21.56 AMI felt like shit. After more than 13 months without spanking my children, after taking my time to apologize to them for doing so in the past and even writing an article about why I am against it; on February 27th, I slapped my son on the backside out of anger.

It had been building up all week — frustration over a lack of respect from my 5-year-old son — and I finally lost it. After dumping water out of the bath tub, I asked him not to do that anymore, sternly raising my voice on my last request. He looked me in the eyes, scooped up a cup of water, and dumped it out right on the floor. I was livid. I took him out and dried him off with a towel, and nearly ended the matter peacefully. But I was so mad at the deliberate disrespect, I bent him over my knee and slapped his bottom. Instantly I felt horrible. I violated our relationship… I had struck my son. I had done exactly what I hated and wanted to banish from our lives – violence as a threat in order to alter a person’s behavior.

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The Dissident Dad — Raising Children in an Increasingly Obsolete System

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Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 12.19.03 PMSixteen years ago, fresh out of high school, I remember forking over $3,800 to take a Carlton Sheets real estate coaching program. I desperately wanted to learn about buying real estate in order to make a living without going to college. Just months out of high school, at age 18, I bought my first rental property. However, it had nothing to do with the Carlton Sheets coaching program. Well, at least not the expensive portion I bought. The real value that helped me was a $99 packet of DVDs that was included. Through these videos and my own actions, I was able to acquire over a million dollars in real estate by age 22 with very little money.

At age 19, I took my one and only college class, “Real Estate Principles”, where I sat in a room with a hundred other kids and listened to dozens of lectures by our instructor. This will always go down as the biggest waste of time in my adult life.

For today’s kids, this type of education is an even greater misallocation of time and capital, because the unconventional means of education is 50x more efficient than it was fifteen years ago. And the best part: it usually costs you nothing.

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Practicing Non-Violence in Our Home

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Screen Shot 2015-02-27 at 10.19.14 AM“Go to your room!”

“Wait until your father gets home… “

“Do you want me to use my belt?”

This is what I remember as a child when I was in trouble. My mother spanked me with a wooden spoon. My father used a thick leather belt. Some of you reading this may have similar memories.

A 2002 ABC News poll reported that by about a 2:1 margin, American parents spank their children. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Education, in Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, school-sanctioned spanking is still widespread.

Hitting children is still normal. Most of us who were spanked may observe that we turned out fine, but the truth is we will never know. None of us have any idea how we might have turned out without any spankings – perhaps better, or perhaps worse.

What we do know today is that scientists can prove that physical violence in a child’s life by a parent can not only alter the brain in a traumatized way, but evidence also shows that the child will possess less gray matter in its brain development.

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