Read this article by Douglas Rushkoff. It’s a brilliant analysis of our current and past financial situation, and he puts it simply so the reader doesn’t need advanced degrees in economics to understand. The history portion of the article was interesting, and certainly helped me understand how we arrived at the crisis, but his solution is what caught my attention. He says,
Think small. Buy local. Make friends. Print money. Grow food. Teach children. Learn nutrition. And if you do have money to invest, put it into whatever lets you and your friends do those things.
Continuing to invest in markets that may or may not actually return your money, or relying on interest rates passed down from on high doesn’t make much sense. Investing in real-world things and people does. Money is abstracted labor, so it makes sense to find whatever gives you your best return and do that. Before, you could get more value from sinking your dollars into massive, complex funds with the hope that more money would shoot out in a couple years, maybe now the best choice is to buy shovels. Find some way to glean objective value from your labor.
That solution makes me feel good, mostly because it’s what I’ve been planning to do anyway. I’ve lately become more focused on what I’m leaving behind, what I’ve produced. When I’m old, I want to look through my life and see things there, not vague memories of experience. I want to write stories, record the songs we write, make some movies.
Because really, what better way to use money? Buy a camera and make some movies; buy more notebooks & ink and write stories. Serve people. If you see someone around you hurting, help them. Stop just planning and start doing. Produce something enduring.
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