He saw a great opportunity to make some money, and seized the day to make the most of that opportunity. Like you, he grew up in a neoliberal world that has begun to shrug off the class system, but which still holds on to that archaic idea that everyone has to have a job, regardless of whether that job is one which maximizes a person’s passions and talents, regardless of whether that’s the job in which a person is providing the most benefit to his community, regardless of whether that job is outdated, outmoded, and a clever design could quickly make it unnecessary – a thing of the past.
He woke up one morning and realized that there was no real virtue in going to work 9-5 everyday to agree with his boss and shuffle paper. He had been paid to notice mistakes and risks in the paperwork, and then suddenly he realized that same eye for detail, that same analytical way of thinking, could be used to spot positive risks, to spot opportunities, gaps in the system where a clever man could create an opportunity to make some money. Have you ever wished that you could work a two-day week and have a five-day weekend? Good-bye, wage slavery; good-bye cow-towing to authority because you were raised to get in line and wait nicely. Today can be the day that you too recognize a great opportunity to make some money.
The ideal opportunity to make money is one that lets you work smarter, and eventually fewer hours, than you work now. Or maybe you’re not employed at all, but still trapped within that mindset that says to make something of yourself in our society, you’re supposed to put on coveralls, a suit, a uniform – and you’re frozen in place, unable to seek out a life you’ll love, because you define an opportunity as something given to you by someone else. Look around you! The world is full of problems that need to be solved, opportunities to make the world a better place through intelligent rethinking of the way we do things now. This is the age of the start-up – an individual or a few people getting together to recognize an opportunity to build a service that’s needed or a new product that will simplify lives, improve communications, or open up opportunities for thousands of others who will then be only too glad to pass back up a small percentage of their success.
Start-ups, crowd-funders and pay-as-you-can publishers – models like these work because people, and consumers, believe that coming up with a great idea should be rewarded, and the best way to reward ingenuity and initiative is by rewarding it directly. There are a number of publishers currently meeting with great success by allowing customers to pay for work on a sliding scale – some pay almost nothing because that’s what they can afford, but more than making up for that is the people that pay tenfold because they believe in the cause and want to support it. Community-driven start-ups like this are just one definition of a great opportunity to make some money while doing what you love. What will you do? What opportunity will you find?