4 ms·

Can Money Set You Free?

69 points by mahipal 16y ago

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Supermighty 16y ago
>On the one hand, I have no boss, so I can’t be sacked – everything about every single aspect of my day and my work is entirely up to me. From that point of view, I’m about as free as it is possible for a person to be. On the other hand, I have no job security or protection of any kind. If people don’t want to read what I write, I have no income . We always have "boss". It doesn't matter if it's my manager at my day job, or my customers at the startup I'm working on. We all serve a master. Even the hobo on the street looks for food when his stomach directs him to do so. I don't think money itself is freedom, or that it could buy it. Though it does buy nice things. Freedom is being able to pro-actively direct your life, move your life. Freedom is being the boss, freedom is being the hobo. They are equal in my book.
- jakx 16y ago
  I don't think having customers is the same as having a boss.
- alexro 16y ago
  You can ignore a incompetent customer who doesn't know what he wants. Try this with a similar boss.
  - Supermighty 16y ago
    But you can't ignore customers as a whole. It similar to having a boss, but not exactly the same.
fleaflicker 16y ago
nice quote buried in there: ...the profound truth of Seamus Heaney’s elegy to Robert Lowell: “The way we are living/ timorous or bold,/ will have been our life.”
thefool 16y ago
This quote was interesting to me, "That would be the end of the world for serious writers, who are not performers and who can’t earn a living giving concerts and selling T-shirts. Nobody knows how this is going to play out." There isn't an audience for successful writers to be speakers?
- starkfist 16y ago
  Only if you're Malcolm Gladwell.
- cperciva 16y ago
  I know plenty of academics who are highly engaging in writing but utterly useless at speaking -- even in private conversations, never mind public speaking. I feel sorry for their students, but I'm glad for the books and research they produce.
  - dwwoelfel 16y ago
    Do you know of any who were able to improve their speaking? If so, do you know how?
- _delirium 16y ago
  For very famous ones, yes, but it drops off pretty quickly. For most authors, the speaking gigs tend to be unpaid--- travel around the country doing book readings and such to promote your book. An exception can be nonfiction authors who can get onto the corporate workshops circuit, but my guess is that novelists aren't too much in demand there.
- Tichy 16y ago
  I can't imagine that a significant number of people would be able to earn significant amounts of money by speaking.
ww8520 16y ago
Yes. Money can at least set you free financially.
rubidium 16y ago
I'm having trouble seeing what the author's definition of freedom is. Financial "security" is one definition I hear people use, and he brings up. But that can be gone in a moment or you can die and it doesn't matter, as his father did. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? I think that has to be defined first. The freest people I have met are those who don't worry about what they can't control, work hard at what they can, and are content with the ups and downs of life. Money seems, to me, to be uncorrelated-- at least above a minimum threshold.
- gaius 16y ago
  Money for me is physical freedom, the most literal kind. I work, work, work, but I can jump on a plane and fly anywhere on a whim, and I do. Averaging ~1 new foreign country/month so far this year :-)
  - dunstad 16y ago
    Have you seen this guy? http://www.chrisguillebeau.com/ http://www.chrisguillebeau.com/ He shares your interest in travel; you might find it interesting.
brc 16y ago
This shows the author, his father and grandfather had the wrong end of the stick. His grandfather, wanting security, had traded his time and independance for security, and got neither. His father, wanting to ensure he had both security and longevity, got neither. The author, apparently seeing this as a failed experiment, walked away from it. What he failed to realise that neither his father or grandfather ever got control over their situation. The continually worked for money by trading their precious time for security. It's that which made them unhappy, not the actual money. The author, to me, is making the fundamental mistake of thinking that you have to work 40 hours a week for 40 years to have 'money', so the choice is between working like a dog or having nothing, not realising that their is another way. Can money set you free? Of course it can, but not if you're trading your free time for your money. For most people, it is a choice between security of income and freedom to spend your time as you want. The most secure people on the planet are prisoners, but they don't have the freedom to do what they want. If you're prepared to accept a less-secure income (by being risky, ie, startups) then you're going to gain the benefits of freedom when/if it does work out. Bottom line : if this guy's Dad had cashed out at a younger age and spent the last 20 years of his life doing things on his own terms, he wouldn't have died an unhappy man in a short retirement.
- starkfist 16y ago
  There are few career paths where one can "cash out."
  - brc 16y ago
    Right, so choose one where you can. That's my point. Don't bash your head against a bank wall for 40 years and then think you've wasted your life. In other words : you can't sell a job, so why spend 40 years working at one?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - barrkel 16y ago
      What are you going to do after you "cash out"? Work can be a source of purpose in one's life. I don't believe in this idea, that seems implied in your post, that bliss lies in comfortable unemployment.
zeynel1 16y ago
"So Dad was a banker but he couldn’t bear talking about money..." I think bankers deal more with "debt" than "money." I don't know if this has any relevance to the article and what the author is saying.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  I interpreted it in a different way; as an example, my father has zero interest and perhaps even scorn for discussing virtually any topic he's done for a living. Doing it for a living can ruin it for you.
wcarss 16y ago
While reading, I hit upon this sentence: "Dad’s example made me feel that, if I wanted to write for a living, I had an obligation to try and do it, and I’ve been writing full-time since 1996, when my first novel did well enough to let me quit my day job as an editor at the London Review of Books." particularly "my first novel did well enough to let me quit my day job" ... so, the money he made set him free from his day job so he could do what he was interested in. :/
10ren 16y ago
I very often enjoy theatantic, but it has a script somewhere that locks up my browser. I've been trying to track it down, but no luck yet as it downloads a lot of stuff from all over the place. Anybody found it already? oblig: I've noticed that people who attain financial freedom often end up continuing to work in that field (after a year or two of feeling useless). We need a purpose more than we need "financial freedom". So you might as well do what you love in the first place; that passion is the best way to be excellent, which is not a bad way to be financially successful as an incident. The challenge is having the courage to live. Money isn't courage.
known 16y ago
No. Social mobility != Economic mobility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

69 points by mahipal 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

>On the one hand, I have no boss, so I can’t be sacked – everything about every single aspect of my day and my work is entirely up to me. From that point of view, I’m about as free as it is possible for a person to be. On the other hand, I have no job security or protection of any kind. If people don’t want to read what I write, I have no income . We always have "boss". It doesn't matter if it's my manager at my day job, or my customers at the startup I'm working on. We all serve a master. Even the hobo on the street looks for food when his stomach directs him to do so. I don't think money itself is freedom, or that it could buy it. Though it does buy nice things. Freedom is being able to pro-actively direct your life, move your life. Freedom is being the boss, freedom is being the hobo. They are equal in my book.

jakx 16y ago
I don't think having customers is the same as having a boss.
alexro 16y ago
You can ignore a incompetent customer who doesn't know what he wants. Try this with a similar boss.
- Supermighty 16y ago
  But you can't ignore customers as a whole. It similar to having a boss, but not exactly the same.

fleaflicker 16y ago

nice quote buried in there: ...the profound truth of Seamus Heaney’s elegy to Robert Lowell: “The way we are living/ timorous or bold,/ will have been our life.”

thefool 16y ago

This quote was interesting to me, "That would be the end of the world for serious writers, who are not performers and who can’t earn a living giving concerts and selling T-shirts. Nobody knows how this is going to play out." There isn't an audience for successful writers to be speakers?

starkfist 16y ago
Only if you're Malcolm Gladwell.
cperciva 16y ago
I know plenty of academics who are highly engaging in writing but utterly useless at speaking -- even in private conversations, never mind public speaking. I feel sorry for their students, but I'm glad for the books and research they produce.
- dwwoelfel 16y ago
  Do you know of any who were able to improve their speaking? If so, do you know how?
_delirium 16y ago
For very famous ones, yes, but it drops off pretty quickly. For most authors, the speaking gigs tend to be unpaid--- travel around the country doing book readings and such to promote your book. An exception can be nonfiction authors who can get onto the corporate workshops circuit, but my guess is that novelists aren't too much in demand there.
Tichy 16y ago
I can't imagine that a significant number of people would be able to earn significant amounts of money by speaking.

ww8520 16y ago

Yes. Money can at least set you free financially.

rubidium 16y ago

I'm having trouble seeing what the author's definition of freedom is. Financial "security" is one definition I hear people use, and he brings up. But that can be gone in a moment or you can die and it doesn't matter, as his father did. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what? I think that has to be defined first. The freest people I have met are those who don't worry about what they can't control, work hard at what they can, and are content with the ups and downs of life. Money seems, to me, to be uncorrelated-- at least above a minimum threshold.

gaius 16y ago
Money for me is physical freedom, the most literal kind. I work, work, work, but I can jump on a plane and fly anywhere on a whim, and I do. Averaging ~1 new foreign country/month so far this year :-)
- dunstad 16y ago
  Have you seen this guy? http://www.chrisguillebeau.com/ http://www.chrisguillebeau.com/ He shares your interest in travel; you might find it interesting.

brc 16y ago

This shows the author, his father and grandfather had the wrong end of the stick. His grandfather, wanting security, had traded his time and independance for security, and got neither. His father, wanting to ensure he had both security and longevity, got neither. The author, apparently seeing this as a failed experiment, walked away from it. What he failed to realise that neither his father or grandfather ever got control over their situation. The continually worked for money by trading their precious time for security. It's that which made them unhappy, not the actual money. The author, to me, is making the fundamental mistake of thinking that you have to work 40 hours a week for 40 years to have 'money', so the choice is between working like a dog or having nothing, not realising that their is another way. Can money set you free? Of course it can, but not if you're trading your free time for your money. For most people, it is a choice between security of income and freedom to spend your time as you want. The most secure people on the planet are prisoners, but they don't have the freedom to do what they want. If you're prepared to accept a less-secure income (by being risky, ie, startups) then you're going to gain the benefits of freedom when/if it does work out. Bottom line : if this guy's Dad had cashed out at a younger age and spent the last 20 years of his life doing things on his own terms, he wouldn't have died an unhappy man in a short retirement.

starkfist 16y ago
There are few career paths where one can "cash out."
- brc 16y ago
  Right, so choose one where you can. That's my point. Don't bash your head against a bank wall for 40 years and then think you've wasted your life. In other words : you can't sell a job, so why spend 40 years working at one?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - barrkel 16y ago
    What are you going to do after you "cash out"? Work can be a source of purpose in one's life. I don't believe in this idea, that seems implied in your post, that bliss lies in comfortable unemployment.

zeynel1 16y ago

"So Dad was a banker but he couldn’t bear talking about money..." I think bankers deal more with "debt" than "money." I don't know if this has any relevance to the article and what the author is saying.

sliverstorm 16y ago
I interpreted it in a different way; as an example, my father has zero interest and perhaps even scorn for discussing virtually any topic he's done for a living. Doing it for a living can ruin it for you.

wcarss 16y ago

While reading, I hit upon this sentence: "Dad’s example made me feel that, if I wanted to write for a living, I had an obligation to try and do it, and I’ve been writing full-time since 1996, when my first novel did well enough to let me quit my day job as an editor at the London Review of Books." particularly "my first novel did well enough to let me quit my day job" ... so, the money he made set him free from his day job so he could do what he was interested in. :/

10ren 16y ago

I very often enjoy theatantic, but it has a script somewhere that locks up my browser. I've been trying to track it down, but no luck yet as it downloads a lot of stuff from all over the place. Anybody found it already? oblig: I've noticed that people who attain financial freedom often end up continuing to work in that field (after a year or two of feeling useless). We need a purpose more than we need "financial freedom". So you might as well do what you love in the first place; that passion is the best way to be excellent, which is not a bad way to be financially successful as an incident. The challenge is having the courage to live. Money isn't courage.

known 16y ago

No. Social mobility != Economic mobility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs