Just for fun I recently asked Erin, “Now that the kids are in
summer school, don’t you think it’s about time you went out and got
yourself a job? I hate seeing you wallow in unemployment for so long.”
She smiled and said, “Wow. I have been unemployed a really long time. That’s weird… I like it!”
Neither of us have had jobs since the ’90s (my only job was in 1992),
so we’ve been self-employed for quite a while. In our household it’s a
running joke for one of us to say to the other, “Maybe you should get a
job, derelict!”
It’s like the scene in
The Three Stooges where Moe tells Curly to get a job, and Curly backs away, saying, “No, please… not that! Anything but that!”
It’s funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after
graduating college, they assume it’s time to go out and get a job. But
like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t
mean it’s a good idea. In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent,
getting a job is one of the worst things you can do to support
yourself. There are far better ways to make a living than selling
yourself into indentured servitude.
Here are some reasons you should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job:
1. Income for dummies.
Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good
idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the
stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly
income for dummies.
Why is getting a job so dumb? Because you only get paid when you’re
working. Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so
thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to
only earn income when you’re working? Have you never considered that it
might be better to be paid even when you’re not working? Who taught
you that you could only earn income while working? Some other
brainwashed employee perhaps?
Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while
you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get
paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow
even when you aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?
Who cares how many hours you work? Only a handful of people on this
entire planet care how much time you spend at the office. Most of us
won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you
have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us
will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care
about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive.
Do you really care how long it took me to write this article? Would
you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?
Non-dummies often start out on the traditional
income for dummies
path. So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been
suckered. Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is
indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way. And of
course there is a better way. The key is to de-couple your value from
your time.
Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially
passive income. This can include starting a business, building a web
site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative
work. The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates
income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously whether
you tend to it or not. From that moment on, the bulk of your time can
be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or
spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income.
This web site is an example of such a system. At the time of this writing, it generates about $9000 a month in income for me (
update: $40,000 a month as of 10/31/06),
and it isn’t my only income stream either. I write each article just
once (fixed time investment), and people can extract value from them
year after year. The web server delivers the value, and other systems
(most of which I didn’t even build and don’t even understand) collect
income and deposit it automatically into my bank account. It’s not
perfectly passive, but I love writing and would do it for free anyway.
But of course it cost me a lot of money to launch this business, right?
Um, yeah, $9 is an awful lot these days (to register the domain name).
Everything after that was profit.
Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement
your own income-generating systems. But you don’t have to reinvent the
wheel — feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate
programs. Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours to
support yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with your
spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money? If you
want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead.
If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free. As long as your
system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid
whether you’re working or not.
Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems
others have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born
knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you
can easily learn it. How long it takes you to figure it out is
irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway. You might as well
emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as
opposed to a lifelong wage slave. This isn’t all or nothing. If your
system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a
significant step in the right direction.
2. Limited experience.
You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But
that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf.
You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job
or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but
you gain “experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real
benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you
can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.
The problem with getting experience from a job is that you usually
just repeat the same limited experience over and over. You learn a lot
in the beginning and then stagnate. This forces you to miss other
experiences that would be much more valuable. And if your limited skill
set ever becomes obsolete, then your experience won’t be worth squat.
In fact, ask yourself what the experience you’re gaining right now will
be worth in 20-30 years. Will your job even exist then?
Consider this. Which experience would you rather gain? The
knowledge of how to do a specific job really well — one that you can
only monetize by trading your time for money — or the knowledge of how
to enjoy financial abundance for the rest of your life without ever
needing a job again? Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have
the latter experience. That seems a lot more useful in the real world,
wouldn’t you say?
3. Lifelong domestication.
Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.
Look around you. Really look. What do you see? Are these the
surroundings of a free human being? Or are you living in a cage for
unconscious animals? Have you fallen in love with the color beige?
How’s your obedience training coming along? Does your master reward
your good behavior? Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your
master’s commands?
Is there any spark of free will left inside you? Or has your conditioning made you a pet for life?
Humans are not meant to be raised in cages. You poor thing…
4. Too many mouths to feed.
Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you
can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system
is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some
of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from
your paycheck. But you can bet that from your employer’s perspective,
all
of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other
compensation you receive such as benefits. Even the rent for the office
space you consume is considered, so you must generate that much more
value to cover it. You might feel supported by your corporate
environment, but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it.
Another chunk of your income goes to owners and investors. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.
It isn’t hard to understand why employees pay the most in taxes
relative to their income. After all, who has more control over the tax
system? Business owners and investors or employees?
You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate. Your
real salary may be more than triple what you’re paid, but most of that
money you’ll never see. It goes straight into other people’s pockets.
What a generous person you are!
5. Way too risky.
Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.
Morons.
Social conditioning is amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.
Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off
all your income just by saying two words (“You’re fired”) sound like a
safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream
honestly sound more secure than having 10?
The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just
silly. You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and
employees have the least control of anyone. If you’re an employee, then
your real job title should be
professional gambler.
6. Having an evil bovine master.
When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn
around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the
corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”
Did you know that the word boss comes from the Dutch word
baas, which historically means
master?
Another meaning of the word boss is “a cow or bovine.” And in many
video games, the boss is the evil dude that you have to kill at the end
of a level.
So if your boss is really your
evil bovine master, then what does that make you? Nothing but a turd in the herd.
Who’s your daddy?
7. Begging for money.
When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg
your master for more money? Does it feel good to be thrown some
extra Scooby Snacks now and then?
Or are you free to decide how much you get paid without needing anyone’s permission but your own?
If you have a business and one customer says “no” to you, you simply say “next.”
8. An inbred social life.
Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet. They
hang out with the same people working in the same field. Such
incestuous relations are social dead ends. An exciting day includes
deep conversations about the company’s switch from Sparkletts to
Arrowhead, the delay of Microsoft’s latest operating system, and the
unexpected delivery of more Bic pens. Consider what it would be like to
go outside and talk to strangers. Ooooh… scary! Better stay inside
where it’s safe.
If one of your co-slaves gets sold to another master, do you lose a
friend? If you work in a male-dominated field, does that mean you never
get to talk to women above the rank of receptionist? Why not decide
for yourself whom to socialize with instead of letting your
master decide for you? Believe it or not, there are locations on this
planet where free people congregate. Just be wary of those jobless folk
— they’re a crazy bunch!
9. Loss of freedom.
It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee. The
first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will. A
good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with
nonsensical rules and regulations. This leads the new employee to
become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any
minute for something incomprehensible. Thus, the employee will likely
conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without
question. Stir in some office politics for good measure, and we’ve got a
freshly minted mind slave.
As part of their obedience training, employees must be taught how to
dress, talk, move, and so on. We can’t very well have employees
thinking for themselves, now can we? That would ruin everything.
God forbid you should put a plant on your desk when it’s against the
company policy. Oh no, it’s the end of the world! Cindy has a plant on
her desk! Summon the enforcers! Send Cindy back for another round
of sterility training!
Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of
course. The only policy they need is: “Be smart. Be nice. Do what
you love. Have fun.”
10. Becoming a coward.
Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity
to whine about problems at their companies? But they don’t really want
solutions — they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all
someone else’s fault. It’s as if getting a job somehow drains all the
free will out of people and turns them into spineless cowards. If you
can’t call your boss a jerk now and then without fear of getting
fired, you’re no longer free. You’ve become your master’s property.
When you work around cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going
to rub off on you? Of course it will. It’s only a matter of time
before you sacrifice the noblest parts of your humanity on the altar of
fear: first courage… then honesty… then honor and integrity… and
finally your independent will. You sold your humanity for
nothing but an illusion. And now your greatest fear is discovering the
truth of what you’ve become.
I don’t care how badly you’ve been beaten down. It is never too late to regain your courage. Never!
Still want a job?
If you’re currently a well-conditioned, well-behaved employee, your
most likely reaction to the above will be defensiveness. It’s all part
of the conditioning. But consider that if the above didn’t have a grain
of truth to it, you wouldn’t have an emotional reaction at all. This
is only a reminder of what you already know. You can deny your cage all
you want, but the cage is still there. Perhaps this all happened so
gradually that you never noticed it until now… like a lobster enjoying a
nice warm bath.
If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction.
Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot
better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is
better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of
repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage. And
when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about
your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were
meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.
Happily jobless
What’s the alternative to getting a job? The alternative is to
remain happily jobless for life and to generate income through other
means. Realize that you earn income by providing value — not time — so
find a way to provide your best value to others, and charge a fair
price for it. One of the simplest and most accessible ways is to start
your own business. Whatever work you’d otherwise do via employment,
find a way to provide that same value directly to those who will benefit
most from it. It takes a bit more time to get going, but your freedom
is easily worth the initial investment of time and energy. Then you can
buy your own Scooby Snacks for a change.
And of course everything you learn along the way, you can share with
others to generate even more value. So even your mistakes can be
monetized.
Here are some free resources to help you get started:
One of the greatest fears you’ll confront is that you may not have
any real value to offer others. Maybe being an employee and getting
paid by the hour is the best you can do. Maybe you just aren’t worth
that much. That line of thinking is all just part of your
conditioning. It’s absolute nonsense. As you begin to dump such
brainwashing, you’ll soon recognize that you have the ability to provide
enormous value to others and that people will gladly pay you for it.
There’s only one thing that prevents you from seeing this truth — fear.
All you really need is the courage to be yourself. Your real value
is rooted in who you are, not what you do. The only thing you need
actually do is express your real self to the world. You’ve been told
all sort of lies as to why you can’t do that. But you’ll never know
true happiness and fulfillment until you summon the courage to do it
anyway.
The next time someone says to you, “Get a job,” I suggest you reply
as Curly did: “No, please… not that! Anything but that!” Then poke
him right in the eyes.
You already know deep down that getting a job isn’t what you want.
So don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise. Learn to trust your
inner wisdom, even if the whole world says you’re wrong and foolish for
doing so. Years from now you’ll look back and realize it was one of the
best decisions you ever made.
Final thoughts
While I wouldn’t recommend starting an online business for everyone,
for many people it’s one of the best ways to generate income without a
job. It has certainly worked disgustingly well for me. If you’re
interested in learning more about this option, please check out
Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.
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