Strike it rich, that is what we all want isn't it?
We celebrate and envy people who get rich with apparently little work, even if they actually did a lot of work to get there behind the scenes. Even so, the image of easy money is so attractive that nearly everyone wants a piece.
It has become a goal, to be wealthy without work - Well, that is the idea. A lot of people who have come to Steem have brought with them this concept in the hope that it is the answer to their prayers. A few random posts and voilá, rich.
The young seem especially attached to this concept that wealth is easy to come by as after all, they spend their lives seeing it. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube are filled with people doing very little for a lot. At face value anyway.
The problem is that even if someone works very, very hard to do the same thing, they are out of luck, it has already been done numerous times before. How many wealthy fashion bloggers, travel bloggers, fitness gurus and the like can the world maintain?
Regardless of skill, how many celebrities can be maintained at all? How many wealthy actors are there and how many actors? I have no answer but I would assume that past B-list, there are many, many more struggling and working multiple jobs. There are quite a few celebrity chefs, but every restaurant has several non-celebrity chefs.
Each success story attracts more attempts and the lower the skill bar to enter, the more attractive it is for the unskilled. And herein lays the real issue.
More and more people are making a play for the dream of workless wealth at the cost of their skillset. This means that there are an increasing number of people with decreasing skills across a variety of areas. What jobs are available for the failed unskilled? What jobs are available in the future for the unskilled when those jobs are automated out of existence?
Many of the people that are looking for workless wealth are likely also those who value material items greatly. What happens when they fail to strike it big because unfortunately for them, there are 3 million people better and more popular at their chosen 'profession'? What happens when life's expectations are not only left unmet, but crushed with no fall back position?
'Live the dream' philosophy has replaced the 'work for the dream' mentality. Previously, if one wanted something, they understood that they would have to work for it. Today, people think about how they can get the thing - working for it rarely enters into the scenario.
We live in a world of upwardly spiralling personal debt and downwardly spiralling global financial conditions. The material desires are winning. Rather than be disappointed at not becoming wealthy enough to buy all of those things, we are increasingly trying to live the lifestyle on credit. Cars, houses, holidays, furniture, jewellery, phones, jeans, shoes, drinks, food, candy... on credit.
I always find it interesting that those that seem to sell the idea of workless wealth are also the ones that are benefitting from the growing debt cycle. It is almost like they created a demand for their products, but, no, banks surely wouldn't want that - they are the ones trying to get us out of debt, aren't they?
The worry I have about encouraging people, especially children, to follow their dreams is that their dreams are often to do very little. It doesn't require skills to do very little, that is why sitting on the couch playing an Xbox is so easy to do. Which is lucky, because that is all that many people are going to be skilled enough to do in the future also.
People dream of grand designs, having grand things, doing grand things but most do not take the first steps into gaining the skills necessary to do them. They do not research and investigate what are the hurdles, risks, market depth and range or competition. They go in blind and when they meet disappointments, they do not look at their own work or lack thereof - not that it matters because once they recognise the work required they will say, "this isn't for me".
Workless wealth is likely a fallacy except for the few that get in very early or get lucky along the way - Early adoption is generally bundled with high risk investment too renember. There are others that get wealthy doing a lot of work too and some are lucky to just survive on doing what they do. Most however, never make any significant inroads into it at all.
It isn't that I think we shouldn't chase dreams, quite the opposite, we should do all we can to do the things we believe we will enjoy. But, if we want a financial return out of it, we better have as much understanding about what we are getting into as possible. That is part of the skill set. We better also understand that if there are many trying to do the same thing, one has to be highly skilled in it or marketing oneself and generating demand in a niche to be successful.
The thing with obtaining skills, once they are possessed, there are generally no regrets. Plus, one pursuit tends to require several skills and these compound in many unexpected ways and bring much varied opportunity and potential as well as often connecting and building new relationships with people from different skill backgrounds.
Who knows, maybe you are already living a life of workless wealth and you will look at this as nonsense. Good luck to you. But if you are dreaming of doing the same, someone is already doing it so you better aim at doing it better at the very least.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
This is a reworked post from two years ago and came to mind when @denmarkguy posted earlier. It will also lead into another piece I think that will look at investing for the future based on a comment that I received that reminded me of something else.