Do You Want To Make Money?

It's easy. The hard part is to answer the question, "How much?"

Do you want to be a billionaire?

On July 22, 2022, I published an article:

Do You Want To Be A Billionaire?

If you think of it, the rich are slaves to their wealth, so you probably don’t want to become one of them, assuming you are still at least a bit sane.

Okay, but how about making money?

Substack, I can assure you, is not a place where authors get rich or even well-fed. The vast majority of authors work, because they are using free ghostwriters, are supported by clandestine sources, are insanely rich and don’t need the money from publishing here, or because they are committed to doing something useful before the show is over. You can easily guess where I’m coming from.

For me, it was clear from the beginning that an author would need about 10k subscribers (assuming one in a hundred pays a little bit) in order to make minimum wage. Little sites like mine MUST cooperate in order to attract enough people even to make a difference. After that, maybe, just maybe, some money might start coming in, but the average time needed for reaching such popularity is two years, which is unlikely to be left before game over. Also, Substack takes out 20% of everything authors get, which is fair, but over $600 per annum, authors are also supposed to pay federal taxes.

How can you make money without being a slave?

At the age of 9, 10, and 11, I was trading in stamps and coins at school, and I learnt that there are mainly two ways to make money:

1. Buy cheap and sell for a lot more;

2. Make others do the work for you.

Since I grew up, I have learned about alternatives:

3. Donations over the Internet might come in only after you reach large publicity, which would likely cost most than what it would bring in, but if someone else pays for the publicity (e.g. the US taxpayer paying for Pfizer's murderous products), the scheme is still profitable;

4. Anyone can start a Ponzi scheme; the secret is to know how to direct the money flow (off-shore accounts and non-profits come to mind) and when to get out by declaring bankruptcy;

5. Pay kickbacks for bank/government contracts by involving their players into your "business" that can even be legitimate (the over-greedy go to jail and you also end up incarcerated, if a bigger dog takes over your turf; that’s what the police are good for).

Feel free to complete the list.

Living reasonably within one’s means might work as long as ask yourself the right question, when buying something. Most people ask themselves, “Do I need this?” Wrong question. The right question to ask is, “Can I do without this?”