Is there any way to make money besides doing a job?
By "doing a job" I mean engaging in productive effort that creates or abets the creation of things people might buy. It needn't entail a conventional nine-to-five gig; nor hammering out widgets or growing potatoes yourself. You can be an investor working out of a garage who facilitates transactions between producers and consumers. If you are creating value for a market, that's a job.
By "making money,” I mean being voluntarily paid for doing said job.
Stealing is not "making money." Instead of abetting the productive process, stealing interrupts and assaults it. Stealing is neither economic exchange nor charity, but a coercive taking away. Even if you steal funds from someone who stole them himself, the funds originated with someone who did do a job, did produce.
Some people, who say they are not crooks, undertake to learn how to acquire stolen goods as an alleged means of entrepreneurial self-enlargement. They receive the instruction, acquire the stolen goods, and then pat themselves on the back for getting off the couch and "doing something." Are they onto something?
"The money is just there waiting for you, the government has all these programs!" say the people on the infomercial for the National Grants Conference. Who should attend? "Basically everyone should attend, to find out if you can make a better life for yourself with opportunity money from the U.S. Government." Hey. "Opportunity money."
On the NGC infomercial, former Congressman Critter J.C. Watts is seated at the brain-trust table, nodding, giving it a Republican spin. "We want to help people be entrepreneurial!" he burbles. "Independence is what it's all about!" "You know, why not take advantage," says one of the moderators, agreeing. "Rob, rob, rob, steal, steal, steal!" chimes in another. "The duped taxpayers have been forced to fork over all this wealth to the government, so it's out there, waiting for you! This seminar teaches you how to grab it!" Back to Watts, nodding sagely: "You know, it's an opportunity! America is the land of opportunity! Come to the seminar!"
Another of the premier how-to-steal-from-thy-neighbor gurus is Riddler-clone Matthew Lesko. He hosts infomercials but I don't think also seminars. Maybe his collations of theft opportunities, books with titles like Getting Yours: The Complete Guide to Government Money, generate enough sucker-boodle to keep a roof overhead even sans seminars.
Work? Yes, work is involved. Don't think that getting free money comes without Herculean exertion!
Article comments
1 - JR
Are landlords thieves? What is their "productive effort"?
According to my theory, Lesko is so hyper and self-parodying because he senses what a lout he is and that what he proposes, i.e., systematically draining the lifeblood of innocent others, cannot be safely debated.
I think you're on to something there.
2 - David M. Brown
Lesko is pretty blatant.
"Are landlords thieves? What is their "productive effort"?"
I trust you're not a partisan of the view that apartment complexes grow on trees.
A landlord has the job of getting new tenants, maintaining apartments and grounds, collecting rents, monitoring finances and staff. If he doesn't do all this directly he does it through a manager he hires. If he is also the owner, he has the job of getting the building in the first place, either by commissioning the construction himself or by buying an already existing building. The funds required to do either had to be earned at some point.
I know that some people are unhappy with their landlords. I have been on more than one occasion. Anybody can do a job well or badly--but that's not the issue treated in the article.