Thursday, December 30, 2010
Friday, September 12, 2008
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.
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.
Introductions
Hi there random net person!
I'm Brandon. This blog is going to detail my efforts, both large and small, to separate myself from the grid, short term and long term.
Why "desero"? Honestly because every variant on exit was taken, including latin terms. But desero is Latin for abandon and that's what I suggest, abandoning the systems which you feel are harmful. So it'll do :)
You may have heard the expression “voting with your feet”, or maybe the related concept the Dollar vote. If not allow me to explain. The basic idea is that participation implies support regardless of expression. This is important in a society where less than half of us vote.
I've found that when you're in a system of any sort and you feel it needs to change you have basically two universal non-violent options. One is to change the system via influence, climb to the top and tell everyone else what's what. The other is to exit. All social systems are built out of and on top of people, that's why they call them social. Thus, any time you exit, anytime you withdraw your participation, you make a system as a whole weaker. Now I'm sure the social Darwinists in the crowd will object saying that if the person exiting was somehow harmful to the system their removal could be seen as a benefit, and I'll grant that possibility, but I'm speaking of people as a whole, behaviorally independent.
Think of it like a hand. Sure if you remove the weakest finger your hand in a sense has become stronger, but you can see the peril implicit in that line of thinking.
Now, many of us simply have never thought about exit as an option before, because they think physical exit is the only valid one. But there are other kinds of exit, and some are arguably far more effective. Consider the potential for change related to boycotts, walkouts, strikes, etc. For as long as groups of people have existed, people have expressed their distaste non-violently by simply leaving or, and this is the point of this blog, withholding participation.
Some on the other hand have thought about this, and find themselves trapped. They for reason of family, and or fixed assets cannot relocate either figuratively or literally, so they think. I am one of those.
As a man once said, Times, they are a'changin. New technologies are being developed everyday which aid us. Technology doesn't always mean gadgets, it means any developed human tool, thus technique is a form of technology.
I'm accustomed to writing philosophy and opinion so if this sounds a bit preachy so far that's why, bear with me.
This blog is a chronicle of my efforts and thoughts relating to practical exit while retaining my physical location. The emphasis will be on practical data, IE what I actually did, what I actually am doing, and what actually happened as a result.
The scale of these efforts will grow when if I become more successful.
Either way this should be useful to you, like the coffee mug says, at the very least I can serve as a bad example.
I'm Brandon. This blog is going to detail my efforts, both large and small, to separate myself from the grid, short term and long term.
Why "desero"? Honestly because every variant on exit was taken, including latin terms. But desero is Latin for abandon and that's what I suggest, abandoning the systems which you feel are harmful. So it'll do :)
You may have heard the expression “voting with your feet”, or maybe the related concept the Dollar vote. If not allow me to explain. The basic idea is that participation implies support regardless of expression. This is important in a society where less than half of us vote.
I've found that when you're in a system of any sort and you feel it needs to change you have basically two universal non-violent options. One is to change the system via influence, climb to the top and tell everyone else what's what. The other is to exit. All social systems are built out of and on top of people, that's why they call them social. Thus, any time you exit, anytime you withdraw your participation, you make a system as a whole weaker. Now I'm sure the social Darwinists in the crowd will object saying that if the person exiting was somehow harmful to the system their removal could be seen as a benefit, and I'll grant that possibility, but I'm speaking of people as a whole, behaviorally independent.
Think of it like a hand. Sure if you remove the weakest finger your hand in a sense has become stronger, but you can see the peril implicit in that line of thinking.
Now, many of us simply have never thought about exit as an option before, because they think physical exit is the only valid one. But there are other kinds of exit, and some are arguably far more effective. Consider the potential for change related to boycotts, walkouts, strikes, etc. For as long as groups of people have existed, people have expressed their distaste non-violently by simply leaving or, and this is the point of this blog, withholding participation.
Some on the other hand have thought about this, and find themselves trapped. They for reason of family, and or fixed assets cannot relocate either figuratively or literally, so they think. I am one of those.
As a man once said, Times, they are a'changin. New technologies are being developed everyday which aid us. Technology doesn't always mean gadgets, it means any developed human tool, thus technique is a form of technology.
I'm accustomed to writing philosophy and opinion so if this sounds a bit preachy so far that's why, bear with me.
This blog is a chronicle of my efforts and thoughts relating to practical exit while retaining my physical location. The emphasis will be on practical data, IE what I actually did, what I actually am doing, and what actually happened as a result.
The scale of these efforts will grow when if I become more successful.
Either way this should be useful to you, like the coffee mug says, at the very least I can serve as a bad example.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)