The Best Way to Make Money (so you don't feel stressed)
It's simple. It's infrastructure.
Most people have financial stress all of their lives.
And while a component of that is environmental, building infrastructure alleviates (almost) all our financial problems.
But first, what is infrastructure?
What is infrastrucutre?
When I say infrastructure I mean a job, business, investment, pact with the devil, etc.
Anything that makes you money and is not correlated with your time.
This is different than earning “passive” income. That term is a scam. Building infrastructure is about decoupling the time invested in an activity from the money generated by it.
Examples of infrastructures
Business
A business is only infrastructure if it runs by itself (partially or totally). If you have to spend 60-hour work weeks just to keep the light on, then you may be building infrastructure but you definitely don’t have it yet.
If you only need to spend a little or no time on your business, then your time is decoupled and you have infrastructure. Congratulations!
Job
Most people focus on business but jobs can also be infrastructure. They get a bad rep because most aren’t.
You’ve developed infrastructure if you don’t charge for your time but for your expertise and knowledge.
For example, let’s say that a company calls you to fix a problem in their supply chain. It’s costing them 12 million a year. You charge 5 million for fixing it and you do it in 2 weeks. That means you developed skills (build an infrastructure) that allow you to earn not based on hours worked but on value delivered.
Investment
Speculative assets like the stock market of Bitcoin don’t count.
It has to be a cash flow asset. Meaning it gives you money by itself, not only when you sell it. Real estate, dividends, lending money, etc.
These investments still require that you spend time in them. It takes time to deal with the tenants, look at quarterly earnings or collect the money. But your monthly income is not tied to how much time you spend working on the investments.
Pact with a devil
Don’t know what to tell you.
Is it ethical?
Let’s filter everything we said by the absolute filter.
Could everyone do this? No.
Could everyone buy a property and rent it? No, because everyone would already have property themselves. There wouldn’t be people to rent it to.
Can everyone have a business that runs by itself? Well no, you need employees in your business, by definition other people have to work so you don’t have to.
Can everyone have super rare, coveted, valuable, professional abilities? No, because if everyone had them then they wouldn’t be valuable.
Is building an infrastructure ethical?
Well, kinda.
Some suppositions that explain why it’s kinda ethical:
Not all people will want to build infrastructure
Not all people can build infrastructure
Building infrastructure is not inherently good or bad
If we build infrastructure do we take the opportunity of someone else? Depends.
If you recirculate value, yes. It’s a zero-sum game. For example, if you copy another kid and start selling candy at school. The same value exists, you are just taking a piece of it.
But if you build infrastructure by creating new value, that’s different. An example would be selling oil you found in your backyard.
And (truthfully) it doesn't matter if it’s ethical: it’s the only path.
Within Capitalism, this is the only way I see of not being constantly stressed about money.
Recap
Infrastructure is anything that makes you money and is not correlated with your time.
A job, business, or investment can be infrastructure only if it satisfies the previous statement.
Is it ethical? Maybe.
Have a wondrous day! I’ll see you in the next one.