Would you accept a $1 million gift on the condition that you could never be a wage earner again?
This is of course a pure thought experiment, but I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this. What are your views on employment, freedom, money, lifestyle, entrepreneurship etc.
Would you be happy to say goodbye to a secure wage based lifestyle or does the exchange of freedom for money enrich your sense of happiness?
Would you accept the gift and if so how would you spend your time?
Yes,
I would answer questions on steemit,
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How would you spend your days going forward afire? Thanks for your feedback
Regular I see your blog. I am a hopeful that I come to learn a lot from this place and I can get some ideas, I think!
@ronni, that's a big question with some interesting implications.
I'm quite satisfied with never being a wage earner again. I have little desire to "work," in the conventional sense of the word.
But now we get into definitions. Is blogging and interacting on Steemit simply because you enjoy it and getting a reward being a "wage earner?"
Is being an artist because it's what you love and someone offers to buy a piece of art from you being "a wage earner?"
I ask, as these questions have a direct bearing on what I would do with my time. I would write; I would create art; I would still collect and trade old postcards and postage stamps. Not because it were "work," but because it gives me enjoyment.
Suppose, for a moment, that you give me a million USD, and I can invest it in such a way that my investment yield is such that it is — in essence — a replacement of Universal Basic Income. I can have a place to live, food to eat and basic services and healthcare. No actual NEED to work.
I think I would enjoy the things I already DO more because there would a replacement of "I HAVE to" do these things with "I WANT to" do these things. So that's a win-win for me.
This is an interesting thought-exercise; resteeming this to see if we can get some more people into the discussion!
@denmarkguy I do see the implications and yes it is a very broad and subjective question. By "wage earner" I was personally thinking in terms of being employed, but I am happy to throw it out there without too many definitions. I am interested in answers from many angles because the topic of freedom and lifestyle is very subjective and we might all see different implications.
A lot of people I know love their jobs and the sense of security it gives them. Furthermore, they thrive in a hierarchical environment with a boss to impress. A need for recognition is probably important for thriving employees.
Personally, I am definitely driven by freedom and having autonomy. Just like yourself. I thrive when I am able to spend the majority of my time pursuing my own dreams instead of working for other peoples dreams that being an employer, a spouse or expectations from friends and family.
I believe humanity would experience much more innovation and prosperity if more people were able to pursue their own dreams with no financial stress.
But I have nothing to back up that claim, this is just me speculating about freedom and personal values.
And thank you for resteeming!
Would you be happy to say goodbye to a secure wage based lifestyle
Wage Based is not secure.
Gimme the money.
Hello everittdmickey! I agree that the wage itself is not in any way secured. You could get fired or have an accident that would take away your ability to perform your current tasks etc. In most jobs, however, you do to some extent develop skills which are valuable which you can resell to other employers in the future. That might give some sense of security.
On the other hand you would probably be able to acquire valuable skill in a faster rate by doing your own thing, not having to perform low level everyday tasks at a workplace. The only problem most people (I guess) face in this situation is to turn those valuable skill in to actual profit if you refuse to take a wage based job. Being self employed and profitable is challenging. The easy money would probably come in the form of a paycheck. Do you agree?
I think most people regard employment as a somewhat secure income.
The question if one should embrace security over freedom is a whole other discussion which I find interesting.
Let me know if my thoughts here make any sense to you
When my dad was a young man...he went to work for a company and continued working for it for decades. He spent most of his adult life working for the same place.
That doesn't happen much any more.
The average AGE of most businesses is much less than that.
like...eighteen years...and declining.
So no...wages (jobs) are NOT secure.
Amen!
Far too much uncertainty in life to have such a large limitation as that placed on it. A million is not what it used to be. Even if you spent it wisely it would come down to when you accepted such a deal in life. Sure if you were a few years out form retirement but that would more than see you into your retirement plans. That could simply be a wonderful enabler of thing you wanted to do in life but had to put them on hold due to being held down the conditions that kept you a wage earner.
I think it also would not be as fun at first thought of it. People who do not handle money so well would spend it rather fast. They would get that dream car at 80k-120k and then realize once it broken down just how much of a money sink high end things become. While on the other end, you would have people would never want to spend a dime out of fear of not having enough later on life. Would was supposed to be freedom now turns into a burden.
Thank you for your thoughtful answer enjar.
$1 million is indeed not what it used to be and thus I guess that amount would probably appeal more to people with higher entrepreneurial tendencies. You could (maybe) not depend on one million to pay the bills for the rest of your life so you would still be burdened with some level of financial stress going forward.
"supposed to be freedom now turns into a burden" - Yes, it all depends on how you mentally deal with the situation. You are given one million, but have employment taken away from you. Is that a net plus or a setback? I all depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice for owning your time!
I see it as a setback as it reduces options you could have in life. It is hard to tell though right away as the full benefits or consequences are not realized till later in life. Some people spend that money in under a year. Another could make it last 10.
You could have that really amazing company idea and as such, you knew it won’t last for forever so you go for it. Years later you are massively in the hole and the company has failed. Most people think they have the next million or billion dollar idea. In reality, it really was not that great or not as “original” as they thought a bunch of other people enter into the same market around the same time and they were not able to compete well enough due to lack of experience of not being a wage worker for a number of years.
If we really wanted to make that 1 million last. I assume you would want to buy a fixer-upper house on the cheap and repair it yourself. Let’s allocate 100k paid in cash for the house and 1k a year in maintenance for next 50 years of your life so 50k. A new/used car every 10 years that you learn to fix up yourself since you now have the time at say 25k per car (250k for a lifetime) and say you really luck out from saving on labor and it's only again 1k in maintenance.
Even if you could get your electric bill say down to $200 average per months ( 2,400 a year, and 120k for next 50 years.) Many people think they would go solar but that’s a pain in the butt unless you shell out a quite a large amount and even then it breaks down. Your water you luck out and bought the house with a well so maintained cost for that is already included in the house.
Now we are what 570k. Leaving everything else in life for 430k. The reason I’m not going include this last bit because while you could plan everything else if you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands and bored it could easily become “l want to go to the bar tonight, I won't eat a restaurant tonight.” Most people forget when you are a wage worker you really can’t be spending your money while working unless it's for a lunch/dinner cost to travel, work clothing. You are however not going be going out and doing a 2 week trip to Disney or go on a cruise.
Now if you really wanted to make that money last the most logical thing is to move to a country that has a lower cost of living. Where you can live like a king. The only issue there that is air travel can get expensive if you want to visit family and live in another country.
We are forgetting the biggest issue here inflation. That simple rule every 20 years your buying power is cut by half. If you plan to live another 50 years you are going have to see that happen a couple of times. Which blows our budget entirely. Even if I don’t account for that and use something like my own cost of living I could maybe make it 30 years. I also know that just not going be realistic. As without that tether of responsibility of a wage work there are quite a few things I would want to do in life and that will skyrocket things.
Now maybe you invest it and it works out great. But since this is all the money you will be able to earn as a wage worker putting it into BTC not the greatest idea in the world. This would be considered “I can’t lose it” money and there for you are putting it in places just to fight inflation with the lowest chance of losing it.
Now let’s move the decimal place. It’s now 10 million to give up wage work. Done, I’m sold. Sign me up time to have an amazing life.
Now the real question comes down to automation and robots have replaced all the humans as workers. Governments now have a basic income they pay out because they tax the automations. I still have a feeling most governments would not be a able to tax high enough to pay a basic cost of living wage. Now without huamns and there high cost of labor we should see prices in everything come down quite a lot. Will that happened? Companies don't like to make less money on paper even if it was a higher amount of profit. So I doubt they will go much cheaper than they already are. They will just find cleaver ways to increase the costs like paying for there over seas tax heaven companies that hold patent rights to everything they make a higher amount.
Good observation! You are correct that by accepting the offer you will in fact limit your options later in life. That is kind of counter-intuitive since you create constraints in order to achieve a higher sense of freedom.. I did not see that.
UBI is still up for debate. Too early to say if that will ever be implemented successfully. It is not even a sure thing that AI will in fact take our jobs. They will of course make some professions obsolete, but currently we might lack the imagination to foresee potential new jobs only humans can manage in the future.
Yes I would accept, without any hesitation or second thought.
Wage based lifestyle is just slavery but with chains being your mortgage and the whip being your empty fridge. Everything beats that so 1 million as a bonus, count me in !
I would spend my time investing, so I could live off the interests (or gains) without touching the capital. With all that freed time, it won't be difficult. I will keep my lifestyle at a minimum so I could live off the capital anyway if investments don't bear fruits.
Freedom is overrated, only the financial side has sense in our current world. Without financial freedom, any other aspect of freedom is an illusion.
I completely agree algo.coder!
I am not even able to add much to this because it highly resonates with my own beliefs. There is, however, one major obstacle one will face when living the life you describe and that is finding a suitable partner. You would have to find a special one who would agree to sacrifice just as much for his/her freedom. My guess is that most people choose security, comfort, living conditions etc. over having autonomy which limits the number of suitable life partners.
The life you describe is not ordinary so you would probably have to live a fairly independent life.
You just put your finger on the weakness of my strategy.
That vision isn't shared by many people, because for them, it's the wage that allows the much-cherished week-end freedom illusion.
For the woman-side of it, it's even more true (not that they're more materialistic but more inclined to stability), especially when thinking about children. Nothing beats the wage system when it comes to financial security (except inheritance) and that's the beauty of the system. Enclosing you while making you think you just liberated yourself. Allowing you to become parent because you're financially stable, when parenting is all about transmitting values, morals and convictions. A child doesn't care about money (assuming he isn't dying of hunger), it cares about love, attention and thriving in a knowledge-rich environment.
And our vision of freedom has been so distorted that people can't even enjoy real freedom anymore. Freedom is now the possibility to buy whatever the hell you want, and not living accordingly to what you think your life should be.
If you look at reactions when people get a working contract, they're happy. They just put chains on their feet but they're doing it while laughing.
Disclaimer : I'm French by the way, so that can influence my point of view.
And I'm far from being free as I described it...
I concur.
It is easy to view this as the enlightened vs. the blind, but I would hesitate to reach that conclusion. I am (we all are) very biased towards my own beliefs which again are based on traits learned / born with.
If I was more risk averse in nature I would probably find employment much more desirable. If a person finds happiness in a job then that life is probably the right setup for him/her.
Happiness might be the underlying goal for everyone. Happiness is naturally much more important for the individual than the collective progress of human kind.
Then again, I think we would create a happier and more passionate work force if we could somehow eleminate financial stress, but that is just guesswork.
Probably not if I would not be allowed to make money on steemit. lol
I do not regard Steemit payments as wage based earnings.
I don't think this proposal has much to think about, at least for me, in my country we are going through the worst economic crisis in history and many have left their paid jobs because they can't even afford to buy a kilo of meat, so in Venezuela we would say yes!
My time would be spent on my own business, where I could be my boss and give more time to raising my child!
So the money would give you an increased sense of security. Would it increase your sense of happiness as well? Is the trade off worth it in the long term (selling your opportunity of employment for money)?
Hi @ronni! I would be on cloud nine and will accept it right away and invest 30% of it in real estate and once it grows from 30% to 100%, I will re-invest it in the same thus making a recurring investment and increase it over time. From the remaining, I will open multiple small businesses of mine which my trustable people can take care of and who need startup cost at this hour. I won't be indulging in it myself as I consider my time precious and I have to take care of other important things. :)
Since I am not a whale as of now, I will invest some in STEEM POWER as I trust Steemit and what it can do in the upcoming years. I will use some of the amounts in a non-conventional business as well. Once, I gain a profit of $1 Million; I will re-invest it and then from that amount when I get $1 Million as profit, I will donate it to the needy. I will go skydiving once as it will give me a new perspective to make the best use of my finances.
Finally, I will train myself to become an international speaker and coach other people globally for making the best use of their time and money. :)
Thank you for sharing your dreams with us singhnishantce. I can see that you would have a busy lifestyle after accepting the money. Would the primary reason for accepting it be to permanently say goodbuy to your boss and then be your own boss for the rest of your life?
I did that couple of years back itself as it was hampering my venture. It feels terrific to be the boss by the way. 😎
@ronni You have earned a random upvote from @botreporter because this post did not use any bidbots.