[castlevania32]

it might look apealing but the basic postulate is wrong : where did you see that people actually want freedom ?
 

 
masses just want to feel like they're free, if they don't see the cage that's fine

 

[grokit]

Haha, Jack and Dennis 

 
Paper or plastic?
 
Cash or check?
 
There's your freedoms 

 

[classakg]

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The author of this article is so wrong on so many levels it's not even worth discussing. His toe was sore, so he chopped off his leg and is now advocating the wonders of being legless.
 

Well, probably he was drunk. lol
 

 

[appophylite]

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Umm.. how about NO. If you want to make a life in this world without a "regular job" you would need a talent or at least some ability, and most importantly, have the courage and the smarts to utilize that ability effectively. This is not an easy thing to do by any margin.
 
There is truth in those ten points, but the conclusion derived from this truth is unrealistic. He is right in that people do make compromises in their behavior and freedom to conform to their jobs, but he does not see the reason why. The reason is simple, it's just so much easier and more reliable to live like this than the alternative.

" One of the greatest fears you’ll confront is that you may not have any real value to offer others.  Maybe being an employee and getting paid by the hour is the best you can do.  Maybe you just aren’t worth that much.  That line of thinking is all just part of your conditioning.  It’s absolute nonsense.  As you begin to dump such brainwashing, you’ll soon recognize that you have the ability to provide enormous value to others and that people will gladly pay you for it.  There’s only one thing that prevents you from seeing this truth — fear.
 
" Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.
Morons. Social conditioning is amazing.  It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.
Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (“You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you? "
 
That answers your statement...

 
 

 
See, I don't agree, that it is merely conditioning and fear that keep people working at jobs. I stay at my job right now because as long as I do what is expected of me, I can expect a steady income coming back my way. I know that if I make a mistake, my company can fire me, but I also know that as long as the mistakes are not exceptionally counter-productive, I own up to them, and Iearn from them and prevent them from happening again, my company will stand by me and keep me employing. I don't see this as conditioning in any way.
 
As I said earlier, I stay at my job because it maintains a steady income for myself. Let's say I want to do as the author of the article says and instead of working for a company, 'make money while living life.' I have a fairly healthy amount of money in my savings/checking/etc right now. My mom has currently expressed interest in starting an Indian restaurant in our town because it will give her something to do, there are no Indian restaurants in our city, and there is a very well expressed niche for Indian food and an Indian restaurant in our area that has not been met. My dad is willing to stand behind her but both are keenly aware of the fact that starting a restaurant is going to be a huge investment in terms of cash and time. I could always seed them with my savings for partial stake in future profits from the restaurant (and I have told them that as my parents, I am more than willing to put up what I can for no real stake on my part, if they really go forward). This is exactly the kind of thing the author is mentioning. If the restaurant is a success, then I can live my life freely and fully, while my initial investment in the restaurant will make money while I do whatever I feel like without having to be accountable to anyone. But what if the restaurant fails, and I lose the initial investment, and it puts my parents into such a big hole, that they will never be able to pay me back and it fully sinks my bank accounts? This is the real reason I have a job: it is a stable source of income I can fall back on if any other money-making endeavor I choose to pursue fails miserably

 

[appophylite]

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Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path.  So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered.  Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way.  And of course there is a better way.  The key is to de-couple your value from your time.
Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income.  This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work.  The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not.  From that moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income.
This web site is an example of such a system.  At the time of this writing, it generates about $9000 a month in income for me (update: $40,000 a month as of 10/31/06), and it isn’t my only income stream either.  I write each article just once (fixed time investment), and people can extract value from them year after year.  The web server delivers the value, and other systems (most of which I didn’t even build and don’t even understand) collect income and deposit it automatically into my bank account.  It’s not perfectly passive, but I love writing and would do it for free anyway.  But of course it cost me a lot of money to launch this business, right?  Um, yeah, $9 is an awful lot these days (to register the domain name).  Everything after that was profit.
Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement your own income-generating systems.  But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate programs.  Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours to support yourself.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with your spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money?  If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead.  If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free.  As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not.
Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged.  Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it.  How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway.  You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave.  This isn’t all or nothing.  If your system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant step in the right direction.

 
Here's another part of the article I don't agree with, with regards to what the author is proposing. He clearly states that in generating the website, He uses systems which he doesn't understand, to do the work for him so that he doesn't have to spend his time re-inventing the wheel. I expect, based upon my reading that the systems he is talking about are systems such as the coding language used to format his page for display, or the Paypal system that allows him to process donations, etc. But what he fails to realize is this: if you need any of these systems and don't want to make them yourself, you need someone else to do it for you. So let's say you want to write a web-page that presents your articles for you and have if accept donations from other people. Writing is your forte but coding a system to process financial transactions is not. Your friend next door, on the other hand is more than willing to do that for you, because that is his skill. So both of you are following the Author's advice: you are not working a job, but you are both setting up a system that generates income for little time investment: you have your blog accepting donations, and your friend can generate income from a monthly licensing fee for his little software that processes the donations to your bank account. Now, a month later, 5 other guys say they have websites that could use the same software that your friend made for you. His revenue stream then increases because now he gets license fees from 6 people instead of one. But now, the amount of time he has to invest in monitoring his system goes up. Initially, only one person (you) used his software, so there was only one place for money to go --> your bank account. Now with 6 people on the system, he has to make sure that money going to each person's account isn't accidentally getting cross-transferred into someone else's account. But it is still only 6 people, so it isn't so bad. Fast Forward to a year later: 1000 people want to use the software your friend initially wrote for you. That is a lot of people for him to monitor, and he finally decides that he needs someone else to help him. So guess what he does? He hires someone to help him do the work. 2 people can do it faster than 1. After another year, he is up to 50,000 licenses, and has hired 5 people to help him monitor all of these accounts. Now he decides that he can leave the work of monitoring the system to the 5 guys he hired over 2 years and he will merely provide supervision to them. You see what has happened? Those 5 guys have jobs: the exact kind of job that the author of the article is stating that you would be a moron to keep yourself in. What the author fails to see is that if everyone decides to suddenly up-and-do as he states in his article, you are eventually going to return back to people having to work for other people and being happy to do so because it provides them with what they need.

 

[marvin]

Honest answer is that 70% of small businesses vanish within ten years of creation. Relatively few end in spectacular bankruptcies, rather, they mostly wither away after the seed money slowly depletes or after it's apparent that the business will never turn a significant profit. It's nice to be able to work for yourself, but the vast majority of people don't have the skills, business sense, or luck to run a functional business with long term income generation and stability that exceeds what they'd make from a salary. Nor do they have the desire to gamble a decade or more of their lives for the benefits of self employment.
 
Glib answer is that we can't all make a living as "internet personal development guru" bloggers.

 

[MaxwellDemon]

A bit of an idealistic post from my perspective.
 
And truth to be told, even if I am an investment guru and always hit right with business and stuff like that... I'd get a job to kill time.

 

[LizardKing1]

 

[desktophifi]

^ second option, i guess. Everybody needs a job. 

 

[anoobis]

^ Most people need an income or a surplus of whatever they produce for trading. That's not necessarily the same as a job. </pedant mode>

 

[mongol]

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Tron

 


Quote:

Honest answer is that 70% of small businesses vanish within ten years of creation. Relatively few end in spectacular bankruptcies, rather, they mostly wither away after the seed money slowly depletes or after it's apparent that the business will never turn a significant profit. It's nice to be able to work for yourself, but the vast majority of people don't have the skills, business sense, or luck to run a functional business with long term income generation and stability that exceeds what they'd make from a salary. Nor do they have the desire to gamble a decade or more of their lives for the benefits of self employment.
 
Glib answer is that we can't all make a living as "internet personal development guru" bloggers.

+1.  Sounds like another new-age huckster, telling people all they really have to do is expose their real self to the world.  If that was true, everyone would be doing it, and there would be no one left to stock shelves at the supermarket.

 

[Dynobot]

Well with raising college tuition costs and the level of public education decreasing I would say that the US is gearing up to become a full fledged third world [manual labor] nation.  Just wait a bit and the jobs will come, our kids and their kids will be stitching shoes and making cloths soon enough.  Shows like Seinfeld et.al got the current generation used to the idea of being an apartment dweller at 30 years old [which is right about were we are today], the next batch of media will soften the next era.  Stay tuned for more media that represents living in poverty [while being funny and entertaining], before you know it the lifestyle will be engrained as acceptable and the generation will comply.
 
Just my twisted take....

 

[dilpal]

And there are more than 100 reasons to get a job.

 

[logwed]

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Well with raising college tuition costs and the level of public education decreasing I would say that the US is gearing up to become a full fledged third world [manual labor] nation.  Just wait a bit and the jobs will come, our kids and their kids will be stitching shoes and making cloths soon enough.  Shows like Seinfeld et.al got the current generation used to the idea of being an apartment dweller at 30 years old [which is right about were we are today], the next batch of media will soften the next era.  Stay tuned for more media that represents living in poverty [while being funny and entertaining], before you know it the lifestyle will be engrained as acceptable and the generation will comply.
 
Just my twisted take....

Living in an efficient space within your financial means is an example of how are society is degrading??

 

[appophylite]

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Originally Posted by Dynobot /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
Shows like Seinfeld et.al got the current generation used to the idea of being an apartment dweller at 30 years old [which is right about were we are today],...

I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at here. Are you saying its a bad thing to be 30 and have an apartment within your ability to support yourself in one?