Neither my comment nor Emile's is below the threshold. Check your settings. If you want to see bad/"controversial" comments (I put those in quotes because I believe LW is actually pretty good an not down-voting controversial statements. I myself have been down-voted many times (given my # of comments) and each time it has been for a good reason) you can adjust your threshold or just not hide those comments altogether.

I think you are being down-voted because you throw out broad statements without any support. I've heard that it actually helps people to track exactly how much they eat and that fact alone usually causes them to eat less. Who is right? Neither of us until we show some concrete evidence. I am citing this interview. What are your sources? Though to be honest, LifeTracking app is a lot more than just a weight tracker and I would hate for people to think about it only in those terms. You can track anything with it.

"Academia is the source of corruption"? "Any one succeeding in such an environment is at most an idiot savant"? "The money flow and supply is almost totally controlled by evil banks and corporations"? Those are all very very heavy statements and, as far as I can tell, not at all obvious. Would do you have to support them?

I understand your want to be self-contained, self-sustaining, and independent, but you will spend most of your life trying to achieve that without accomplishing much else. It's ok to rely on other people, on tools, even on corporations, you just have to understand and accept the costs. And many times those costs are very reasonable for what you are getting out of it. Starting from scratch is nice to imagine, but if you've done programming, you'll understand that in the end you almost always end up in the same sort of mess you tried leaving. To sustain any kind of technology you need to rely on entities outside yourself and they will always have an option of cheating you. Punish the cheaters, reward the cooperators. Iterated prisoner's dilemma with tit-for-tat strategy.

Also, if you are interested in "currency from ground up" check out BitCoin.