Want to Make a Ton of Money?
Figure out how to help other people make a ton of money
We, as a society, have decided that feeding, clothing, sheltering, and educating our children isn’t all that valuable.
Caring for our elderly or ill? Not really, no. Keeping our homes, our workplaces, safe and clean? Um, nope. Regulating our traffic, ground, air, and water? Please. Designing our furniture, buildings, cars, toothbrushes, wheelchairs? Not a chance. Maintaining our public health? Go fly a kite.
Don’t get me wrong; some of the people doing some of those things are being very well compensated. Not the teachers or workers in elder-care and certainly no one who’s cleaning anything anywhere except possibly nuclear waste.
But if you want to get really rich? Like stratospherically rich?
Put all your smarts and energy into figuring out how to help other people get (and stay) filthy rich.
Across the board, it’s the people who are assisting someone else in adding to their pile who are being the most handsomely compensated. Hedge fund managers, tax attorneys, money managers, bank directors, insurance brokers, investment bankers, and financial advisors all turn their skills and energy towards making other people rich.
That is what is valued in today’s world
Even online, if you can pull together some tips on how-to-make-your-content-go-viral and plop it in front of the most eyes, be ready to sit back and rake in the dough.
Another set of “professionals” takes a close second to the above: Self-help gurus. This world is filled with very hungry people, hungry for something they usually can’t name but think they can find by signing up for this course or buying that book or listening to some podcast. The Tony Robbins and Barbara Shers and Eckhart Tolles of this world are not worrying about how to pay the mortgage and they’re telling you that you don’t have to either by doing these few simple things. Which you pay them for.
To some degree, we’re all infected with this set of values. I know I am. You better believe I’m busting ass online to get as many eyes on my writing as possible and, by extension, as much money as I can for that work.
It’s cold out today but there’s the sun and I don’t have to go to work (oh yeah, because I don’t have a job). I live in New York City. There are dozens of free and inexpensive things out there to do, see, and enjoy. I could throw on a warm sweater and coat and go out (well, ok, I could do that after I finish the laundry). But am I going to do that? Hell, no. I am disciplined. I am committed. I will continue to write, publish, and promote two to three articles daily, dammit, and as God is my witness I will break that frigging $100 this month. Watch me!
I’m not in it (only) for the money
While I don’t kid myself that I’m going to make anything approaching real money on this platform I still wouldn’t be doing this level of work to simply tuck everything onto the hard drive like I did for over 20 years, thank you very much. I’m 62 years old and “talent acquisition professionals” aren’t pounding on my door. Time to find another way to pay the rent.
That said, I can’t yet bring myself to start selling my novel on Amazon nor am I ready to start writing how-to-go-viral pieces. Full disclosure here, until I know how-to I guess I won’t be even trying that little ploy.
How our values create our reality
Because we don’t insist on ensuring that teachers, nurse aides, home health care professionals, housekeepers, janitors, and even the police earn a living wage, we live in a world where too many of our children lack basic necessities including food, clean drinking water, shelter, and a good education. We live in a world where it’s ok that tens of thousands of people sleep in the street when it’s 30 degrees and snowing out. We live in a world where young black men have to be careful not to run if there are police nearby.
This has been going on long enough that we’re now dealing with the results of at least two generations of those children who are now adults who have largely fallen through the cracks.
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society.”
Our choice
When I was in college, as a “non-traditional” student, many of my more traditionally aged fellow students were all about hitting the sweet spot in the market and leveraging their education to make the big bucks.
If you’re young, ambitious, and smart you can go that route and quite possibly succeed.
But given the current situation in the world with soaring income inequality, insane levels of student loan and medical debt, planetary climate crisis, and a ton of cranky old people (like me) panicking about what’s going to happen to Social Security and Medicare, it’s heartening to see a lot of young, ambitious, and smart people throwing all they’ve got into addressing these critical issues. I’m looking at you, Occupy and Sunrise Movement and Green New Deal. And you, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And, yes, go Bernie!
But go right ahead and make a pile o’money
If that’s your carved-in-granite goal, go for it. Maybe you’ll go the Warren Buffet route and soothe your conscience by giving loads of the stuff away. Great idea!
But remember that we’re all together on one big blue boat floating in an expanding, airless, black universe and when this boat goes down, you go with it.
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