We're All Addicts

The biggest issue hands down relating to personal exit, is money.

Money is why we trade away the most valuable thing in any life, time. So the biggest part of any personal exit strategy, and thus this blog, is going to relate to money.

I would like to say that what's needed here is an understanding of what money in and of itself actually is and does, but really its not. I'm not even sure it helps. I can tell you about fractional reserve, and fiat, but will that free you from the cycle of spend work spend? Not likely.

So what will? Can anything?

Freedom from career need not be freedom from money. As machines make established process of any sort easier and easier to automate, marketable skills, or skilled labor becomes both harder to acquire and harder to sell. Well all know the cliché of the graduate who can't find work despite tons of schooling. This can work for us.

There are two basic ways to attack this problem. Making money and saving money. This post is about making it, since that's the point of a career.

Our society tends to think of being self employed as being the same thing as self sufficiency but that's not the case. True self sufficiency is between you and your environment, not you and your bank account.

Still, self employment, save total material independence, is the ideal solution to the Exit Funding Problem. If you make yourself the company you work for, your job adapts to you. And thats the goal. Exit is about freedom. To really accomplish this I believe one has to be able to see himself as his own employer. Many people will work extremely hard for an external employer but when it comes time to work for themselves they are unimaginably resistant to labor. They feel like they are working for nothing because the meter isn't running so to speak. At work you know you're getting X for Y. It's more distant and fuzzy when you work for yourself in the beginning.

There are many ways and reasons to explore self employment. The problem is that most of the people that talk about it want something from you. I'm no exception. But all I want from you is to be there and read this. Your presence helps me, your reaction as yet really doesn't matter. You're already giving me everything I want, so now I might as well try to make it worthwhile for you.

There are alternatives to what you probably do now. Consider that money is a means to an end, that end being life and happiness. If you're spending money on something and it no longer makes you happy, stop spending money on it. Thats seems simple, but people don't really think about it much when you get right down to it. Like all the stuff in your closets. That stuff has a maintenance fee. For one it makes your house smaller for you, but costs the same to heat and cool. It costs you time every time you have to search it. And then there are the psychological costs, which I won't get into.

The nature of the human brain makes consistent reward impossible. This means that you'll spend greater and great amounts of money just to maintain the same level of happiness, and if you are trading a fixed asset like time for an infinite demand like happiness you'll suffering more and more as time goes on no matter how much money you make. The Buddhists in the crowd might recognize that logic.

My point is you need to find a way to make money that is not directly linked to your time. You need to sell something other than time, you must sell a product of your time directly, because no company will pay you what your labor is worth, they can't.

Every employer is a parasite, the only variable is who pays, who gains, and the cut. The only exception is self employment because you can't steal from yourself. You may cause yourself loss but that's not theft. That's risk.

Think about that stuff, look around, try to find a way to live off of yourself rather than some company.

You'll be happier.