{"id":854,"date":"2013-08-21T09:26:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T03:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/saravanan.org\/?p=854"},"modified":"2018-07-29T15:14:49","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T09:44:49","slug":"fuck-you-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/fuck-you-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuck-you Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fuck<\/p>\n

Buckminster Fuller (of buckyballs<\/a>) said “controlled time is our true wealth”. \u00a0To him, wealth is the time span for which we\u00a0can maintain our desired lifestyle without having to spend time making money.\u00a0During the dot-com bubble, Silicon Valley came up with Fuck-you Money<\/a>. \u00a0For them, it is the amount of money you need in your hand before you can stop working for your living.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sadly, the amount of wealth many of us\u00a0have accumulated can’t even last a month if we stopped working. For some\u00a0smart people among us, it can last a few years. It’s only the case of a small fraction of people that the wealth can last their entire life time.<\/p>\n

Million Paupers to Billion Kings<\/h3>\n

Historically, masses\u00a0never had opportunity to acquire decent amount of\u00a0money without taking huge risks. \u00a0Comparing with today’s terms, human productivity was abysmally low [chart below shows the population and per capita GDP of UK (By the way, did you notice how there is a tight correlation between the population and per capita income? \u00a0If you want to understand this phenomena, you should watch this TED video<\/a>)].<\/p>\n

\"UK<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our culture carries the burden of thousands of years of legacy. \u00a0We still live by religious and moral teachings that were conceived 2,000 years ago, if not\u00a0earlier. \u00a0They come from an era where anyone who didn’t take work seriously perished, or became a criminal. \u00a0Even the nature of work was such that it placed huge premium on toil, rather than creativity. \u00a0You can see from the graph that this was beginning to change somewhere around 1850 and the change picked up pace around 1920.<\/p>\n

Take a look at the next graph. \u00a0It shows the price of lighting (in today British Pounds, for million lumen hours) in UK over the last two centuries.<\/p>\n

\"Price<\/a><\/p>\n

When you put the two graphs together, you can see that before 1850, not only people were making far less money, they were spending through all their orifices. \u00a0Unlike most of us like to believe, today we live in a world that is cheaper than the past. \u00a0And, today, we live in a world where everyone makes enough money to live like how a Duke used to live, if not a King.<\/p>\n

We now have an opportunity to make enough money, without taking unreasonable risk, in a few short years to fund\u00a0our living for the rest of our lives. \u00a0Unfortunately, no one tells us\u00a0that because we are stuck in a culture that is founded on values and customs that were appropriate thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n

Note: The above two graphs were taken from this paper<\/a>.<\/pre>\n
Education for Foot Soldiers<\/h3>\n
The education system that we have today was founded in Prussia, during the late 19th century. \u00a0The purpose of the Prussian education system<\/a> was to produce more people who were\u00a0capable of reading bible and working in the army. \u00a0Eventually, when industrial revolution came along, the same education system was used for mass producing workers for the factories.<\/p>\n
Back then, it was a huge deal. \u00a010 years of education guaranteed a lifetime of earning opportunity. \u00a0And as an added bonus, there was even an assurance of some support cash when a person can’t work anymore. \u00a0Life has never been this good and every responsible parent rushed to ensure that their children had this thing called formal, mass produced, education.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, mass education prepares us to be a worker throughout our life. \u00a0It doesn’t teaches us the skill required for retiring early in life. \u00a0Even after getting a 20 year education, we<\/p>\n