[ale] [OT] (but computer and cryptography related) Bitcoin, Litecoin

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi Jim,

I'm sure the work you do is excellent, and the money is well deserved.  I'm willing to do the same once I beef up my skills.

However, trading your time for money inevitably links your wages to your time, and caps them as well.

Let's say you'll never exceed being paid $ 100 / hour, just pulling a number out of a hat.  There are 2000 work hours / year.  Let's say you have 40 years left to work.  You can make 100 * 2000 * 40 = $ 8,000,000, period.  No more.  In this period of time, you will have worked 80,000 hours.  Actually, that's a lot of money, but we all know you won't keep but a fraction of it.

But, here's another way to make money.  You delink your wages from your time, at least to a point.  Again, pulling this out of thin air.  Let's say you write an amazing book during the next year discussing essential information in your field of expertise.  You publish it on Kindle.  It becomes popular.  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you spent 3 hours per day doing this, which works out to be 750 hours (5 days / week, 50 weeks).  Let's say it sells 100,000 copies at $ 10 each and you get 35%.  You just made $ 350,000 for 750 hours of work.  That works out to be $ 466 / hour.  If you did that for 40 years, you would have $ 14,000,000 and you will have worked 30,000 hours.

Is this likely?  No.  But it is possible and some people are doing this.

Here's another scenario

You invent the next world's greatest router / networking widget.  You hire a team of designers, marketers, lawyers, and manufacturers to bring it to market.  You sell 2 million of them, and for each, you personally get $ 10.  So, you make $ 20,000,000.  If you had spent the normal work year of 2000 hours of your personal time, that works out to $ 10,000 / hour of your personal time.

These are made up numbers.  The point is not whether the numbers are realistic.  The point is there are more efficient and less efficient ways to make money, while still being moral and legal.  The least efficient is to trade personal hours for personal dollars.  A more efficient way, if you're successful, is to create a product, like a digital book, that can be replicated and distributed, and to an extent marketed, automatically.  Therefore, you make more revenue for every hour you spend.  The final example I mentioned, where you invent something made of molecules rather than bits, can be very profitable but also very risky.  If it works, you have a whole army of other people working for you to create, market, and distribute the product, and you get part of every sale.  This can generate tremendous revenue versus the number of personal hours you put in.

Finally, suppose you had accumulated enough wealth in one of these ways to invest and live off the investments.  I do NOT speak from experience.  But, if you had a $ 1 million in the bank you could realistically earn $ 50,000 / year with minimal risk.  It would have taken huge sacrifices to get to that point.  But afterwards, you could devote your full time to enjoying life and making the world a better place rather than just surviving.  If you have $ 4 million, you could live nicely on $ 200,000 / year.

I would never advocate being or becoming a money grubbing asshole.  However, if I can, I strongly prefer to make money more efficiently than trading every hour of my life for $ 30.  And, by the way, at that rate of pay, it would take me 16 years to gross $ 1 million.  If I am able to gross $ 1 million in a shorter time frame by other less conventional methods, you can bet I'll be able to do much more to make the world a better place with that money than I would have been able to do otherwise.

By the way, most viable get rich quick schemes are get rich slow schemes, but they may be faster than conventional tactics.

Here are two excellent books:

4 Hour Workweek

http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Anywhere-Expanded-Updated/dp/0307465357/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364690107&sr=1-1&keywords=4+hour+work+week

The Richest Man in Babylon

http://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-Bestselling-Financial/dp/1615890343/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364692421&sr=1-1&keywords=richest+man+in+babylon

Sincerely,

Ron



Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

>I work for my money. I materially participate in doing things that
>people
>then fork cash at me for my time, effort and knowledge of how to do it.
>I
>don't skim off the efforts of others or devise 'get rich quick' schemes
>by
>"calculating" mostly fake money.
>
>I also think currency trading is a whole pile of crooked stupid. Money
>is
>the intermediary between what I have and what I want. Somewhere, some
>crooked ass who either wore a crown or whispered in his ear figured out
>if
>the king would stuff his mattress with cash, the peasants would have to
>give more turnips to make the sheriff leave them alone and thus money
>became the end goal and not the simple counting stick it was supposed
>to be.
>
>Were it not for the money grubbing assholes of the world, it would be a
>much better place to live in.
>-- 
>-- 
>James P. Kinney III
>*
>*Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
>gain
>at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own
>tail.
>It won't fatten the dog.
>- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
>*
>http://electjimkinney.org
>http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
>*
>
>
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>
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--

Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen.

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
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Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com