Aspie businesses for Aspie employees - Is it ethical?

Post Reply New Topic

Sure, but I just think we could take it to the next step...

I think we can do both things... find ways of making a living (for the people who can't at the moment)

And learn more about how and why we are the way we are. But that may not be for everyone. I myself am fairly high functioning... I have strong weaknesses but I can function as a fairly normal person. But problems are more about lack of job skills because I have very serious executive function issues. I can have very serious problems with simple things like paper work etc. This is why I think my issues could be easily solved in the right structured environment.. and maybe I could help others in different fields as well?

But really I am just brainstorming and pitching ideas and picking people's brains etc. Seeing what we can do and how many people we can get involved.. what problems we face etc.

Fair enough. I have a business school/industrial engineering education + have studied many other things over the years, so I get wanting to chat about those interests and find ways to put them to productive use, increase our earnings etc. I want those things for myself, too.

However, I feel that most if not all of that is moot if my own level of functioning (which is high, in general.) isn't up to par consistently enough to make any of that stick and work. So, I've been focused more on resolving the root causes of autistic neurological symptoms.

Which is why it's a good thing you mentioned executive functioning... we should be discussing that vs. executive meetings. At one point my executive functions were horrendously, t e r r i f y i n g l y, bad - as were other traits.. but now? Not so much & getting better. I think there's more value in discussing autism treatments and coping mechanisms here than business, but am not against talking ideas/numbers etc either. I've sometimes wondered why there are discussion forums here for science/technology/engineering/math, but not for business/economics/finance/marketing etc as I think we could have some seriously stellar Aspie threads about all of those things & learn a lot from each other.

I like the Aspiretech Highland Park idea. I can definitely see it spreading to high tech areas like San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Vancouver BC. If it pays their testers only $10 that wouldn't be sufficient for some, though. These high tech areas are notoriously expensive to live in. With a monthly rent of $800 to $1200, you'd need a job that pays around $15/hr if 1/2 of your monthly check is for the rent and the rest for living expenses. At $10/hr, nearly all of your monthly checks would go to the rent with nothing left over for bills or food.

The thing is I think I could have done well in school and college but I had several things working against me. I was undiagnosed aspie AND had a horrible home life because my mom is basically crazy/psycho. If my mom was a normal successful person I doubt my issues would have been so debilitating.. plus she was in denial about my disorder.

I have lived with her for several years after getting nowhere on my own and living with her she has hindered me as much or more as she has helped me.

Now I am at the point where she is pushing me to the point of wanting to be homeless rather than put up with her or keep taking the abuse.. I am kind of out of options at this point. This is why some aspie initiative might be my only hope of ever getting ahead in life. But that might be a hopeless cause, too.



What if you can't change them though? This is the kind of realization I have come to... so the only solution I can see is us aspies joining together and trying to make up for our weaknesses... But maybe there are other alternatives out there?



From my understanding this is something that needs to be addressed at a young age... it might be too late for me.. this is the kind of hopelessness of the situation I feel I face... and why I am trying to find a solution that might work for me.



Imagine trying to get a neurotypical to try to live like an aspie? This is the problem I see in trying to change too much... I think in the end either you fail or just go crazy.. That's what happened to me trying to be "normal" before I knew I was an Aspie.



That's a great point but maybe it's just out of our realm of capabilities... maybe we need neurotypicals to handle this? That is what lovemybrother was saying earlier in this thread.

Last edited by CAL_1138 on 09 Jun 2013, 6:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If only we could find some property to park one of these.. I'd live in one... and maybe we could even SAVE money living this way.. imagine that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJLSoUkh1Vs

They're building micro-apartments all over the country that are similar in design of the micro house. Interestingly, because of the neighborhood they're in, their monthly rents are still high ($600 to $900). I've lived in my car for years. It was inconvenient as hell. I think if I had a conversion van or something big enough to shower in (an RV?) then a $10/hr job wouldn't be so bad.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/ ... ilxml.html

I don't think that the strengths and weaknesses of autistic people really complement each other. Instead, I think that autistic and neurotypical strenghts and weaknesses complement each other more.

@btbnnyr - In other words, we're the Yin to the NT's Yang?

I think in many situations you night be right but from what I have seen here many other aspies have strengths I don't...

I may be weird even among aspies though... so maybe it's just me...

It seems to me that if we worked well with NT's we wouldn't have the problems we do though...

I see the normal world as being made up of people who are decent at most things... and then I see aspies as individuals with specialized abilities.

But if you take a group of 10 NTs and a group of 10 aspies I think if you have 10 aspies who are built right for the right team they could surpass the group of 10 jack of all trade NTs.


Also.. the aspies would benefit being in a group of aspies that knew how to understand each other where as when a aspie is with a group of NTs they are ostracized because the NTs don't understand or want to deal with the aspie..

Last edited by CAL_1138 on 09 Jun 2013, 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You probably have to hire an NT or two to do the tasks that keep the business running day to day. That could be a major weak spot for a group of any number of autistic people all focused on their special interests.

Another suggestion I have is that the group decides which job each person should do, then each person does their job with minimal interaction with other people. This is because I don't like working closely with other people, but I like knowing what is my job and doing that job on my own and outputting the results to others per 1 or 2 weeks.

I thought we might be able to deal with this by finding rare aspies that were good at certain things or by devising systems that dealt with our issues.

For example it seems executive function is a problem with many aspies...b ut if we could find the rare aspie who is good at that he could help all of use with that or over see us in that way.

But we could use NTs for that as well but I am worried the NTs might take over and then we get marginalized again.

We also might be able to use computer programs etc to help us in our weak areas...

Yeah.. definitely.. we could work out all kinds of systems like this.. so we work as a group in a way but also in isolation. Maybe we could work in a group through simple emails or automated responses and questions etc.

But the key is that it is all geared towards how we do things rather than how the normal NT world works.. I think the NT way normally hinders us.

I completely agree. With computers and e-mail it makes anything possible. It really is a struggle to try and survive in a neuro typical world. Are you talking about having a company that dips into a lot of areas, e.g. Art, History, Business etc. Like virgin has records, airlines, digital t.v. and who knows what else. I am a student of Illustration myself who likes the idea of this. Give me a PM if anything happens farther with this idea or if I can help.

Hi, maia. Yes I was thinking of all types of ways to make money.

I was thinking we could find all aspies and tap into all their abilities. Make a science of tapping into their abilities and we could do it like a business where the people who did the amazing things got a big cut of their achievement... and the people who helped the aspie achieve what they did got a cut. And the organization got a cut for helping the aspie stay on his feet while he was struggling to find what he could do etc.

It's just kind of a fantasy right now... I don't know how we could implement it but maybe others can help with that? It seems like a very complex problem.

We could start smaller with various kinds of jobs and work as well though. The problem is I have a lot of stuff going on... I am just trying to survive at the moment too and i am not knowledgeable about business. My talent is ideas.. well at least I have a lot of them.

You can see this thread where I have another project.. I would be glad to use this project to help the aspie community in any way I can as well if people would ant to contribute. I need people who are writers or make documentaries and science knowledge would help. But we need open minded people.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt232936.html

As the disabled are a minority, hiring only disabled would probably not meet the test to declare it "discrimination" as the disabled are not adequately represented in the workforce.

Reverse discrimination becomes an issue when you have no problem with proportional representation in the workforce and you pass over well-qualified people of the majority to hire inferior qualified minorities.