Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
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Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
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Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#2A better question is: Should you live your life through the morality of others?
If the answer is yes, then simply read what someone else says about making money and do that.
If the answer is no, then you're free and can do what you want.
Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#3The mistake people make is to toss any thoughts of making money to the side.
As pg says, get ramen profitable as quickly as you can. That really changes your attitude, and allows for the long term thinking.
Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#4There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society.
The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative.
People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their lives better. Even hoarders drowning in needless stuff are spending the money to assuage the pain they would feel if they didn't.
The vast majority of software has a serious positive impact on the customers lives. We may wonder about Instagram, but instagram made a LOT of people happy. Making people happy is a positive benefit to society.
Plus, lets remember what money is. Money is a medium of exchange, its not the thing itself. It is a medium for trading your labor or your intellect. A ditch digger rents his body out at work in exchange for money. When he buys shoes, the money is simply they conveyance of the value from digging the ditch to the person selling the shoes.
When a software developer uses his brilliance to come up with a new program, he's trading his brainpower for whatever he ends up being with that money. Money is the medium that enables efficient transactions where barter failed. That's all.
Money is really another way of saying life.
People don't trade their life away, generally, except where it is profitable.
You make a billion bucks by making something people want? You've improved their lives probably by 7-9 billion dollars worth.
$7 for a movie? Worth more than $7 in entertainment to the person buying it... or they wouldn't buy it.
You don't get to be a millionaire by making people miserable.
(and I need to get a blog going, I think my comment is longer than the original article.)
Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#5There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative. People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their…
>Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society.
HFT and Domain squatting are legal.
Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#6There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative. People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their…
Academia, Teaching, Charities & Not for profit organisations all improve society and you wouldn't do any of those if you wanted to be rich.
Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#7There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative. People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their…
>Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. HFT and Domain squatting are legal.
The people who make money doing this will spend the money on goods and services, which in turn benefits the people involved in providing them.
Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#8There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative. People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their…
>Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. HFT and Domain squatting are legal.
Hence virtually? It's easy to pick out a few examples of people making money (often lots) that do have a detrimental affect on society, but it really is a very small number of people. Compare how many people you know who are making money through 'bad' jobs such as HFT and domain squatting, and compare it to the number of people you know who aren't.
Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#9There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative. People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their…
Agreed, most of the wealth generated by most businesses is enjoyed by its customers, not its owners. Take Google or Facebook - while they enjoy huge profits now, and will in the future, their profits are dwarfed by the wealth (search and connection) they have created for their users.
Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. HFT and Domain squatting are legal.
The people who make money doing this will spend the money on goods and services, which in turn benefits the people involved in providing them.
Actually, the HFT people are more likely to sock their winnings away. Anyway, "I take money from people so that I can increase the national GDP by spending it" is not much of an argument for a socially valuable way of life.