I’ve always believed if I looked hard enough I can find something that makes me a lot of money.
Whenever I express that belief many people think I’m crazy. The world is VAST. Right?If I am indeed being ignorant I want to know. I would like to be given some intelligent reasons why I will not find anything of worth. What are some real world roadblocks?
The obstacles are the other people out there. There are places in the world where you could pick up gold nuggets from the beach. Except the previous 1,000,000 people who walked along the beach have already picked them up. There are places where crude oil bubbles out of the ground. Except oil companies already own those places. There are places in the world with millions of acres of forest, ready to be turned into lumber. Except somebody already owns them.
If a random person could just wander around collecting valuable stuff, then why would anybody do anything else? People would quit their jobs and start gathering the stuff, until there was so much competition that it wasn’t worth it anymore.
You’re lazy. You’re looking for the easy way out. Unless you win a lottery or inherit a bunch of money, the only way to wealth is talent and hard work.
Indeed. The critical limiting resource is land itself - with virtually all of it being already claimed or regulated in some way. Either buy a plot of land (or go find an uncharted island somewhere) and see if you can find any resources on it that someone will pay you for.
An immigrant man comes to the United States, having heard that the streets are paved with gold. He gets off the boat, goes through Ellis Island, sets foot on the streets of Manhattan and, sure enough, there are gold bricks scattered from one end of the street to the next.
“Nah,” the man says “I’ll start work tomorrow.”
There are lots of ways to make money, and yes, one of those is finding value in something that other people don’t see as valuable. But if you’re talking about stealing flowers or fishing without a permit, no, you’re not going to get rich that way. If you stop and think about some of the schemes you have proposed, they’re pretty ridiculous and actually a lot of work. They only seem appealing because you think you’d be getting a disproportionate amount of money from them compared to the effort you’re putting in (I’m skeptical on that point). I’m all for working smart instead of working hard, but I don’t think you’re on that path. You’d be better off actually getting some kind of stable job and developing something more lucrative on the side.
This is not a resource issue, unless by resources you mean free stuff. No, you’re probably not going to be able to make a lot of money by taking free stuff and then selling it to people.
In one of your threads you mentioned ‘side hustle’. See, now that makes you seem lazy, especially when it involves stealing flowers, etc.
That said, you could always try repurposing garbage. Into art maybe, or something useful. It’s readily available and free, so anything you can sell it for will be profit. But people who succeed at such things, are usually motivated by more than hustling some easy money. They are artists, with creativity to apply, or environmentalists with a cause they care deeply about.
An easy money side hustle, isn’t enough, you need to care or have a skill or a direction. In short you need to invest yourself in something, beyond wanting maximum payoff for minimum time and effort.
“It’s impossible!”, said Pride.
“It’s risky!”, said Experience.
“It’s pointless!”, said Reason.
“Give it a try.”, whispered the Heart.
Good luck to you, and let us know how it goes, because we are interested!
Just about everyone at some point in their life asks themselves “How can I get a lot of money without having to work for it?”
This means that you have about 4.5 billion people competing with you. Good luck!
I’ve got some great ideas on how to make some easy money.
What are you willing to pay me for these ideas?
There are asteriods containing billions of dollars worth of rare and precious metals out in the solar system. Nobody owns them, nobody has any claim that will actually hold up in a court of law. All you need to do is go collect them.
The world *is *vast, and there is a heck of a lot of stuff that is locally common that someone else will pay good money for.
The problem is getting the people and the stuff together.
Define valuable asset. As others have said the valuable physical assets have been monopolized by now for all intents and purposes. Land, natural resources, etc.
However mental assets have not, if you come up with an idea for a product or service that people value then you can turn that into an entrepreneurial venture.
However the myth that inventions and small businesses always leads to success is not true. Most fail or barely make ends meet.
Damn…you beat me by a couple of hours.
Except it would be more accurate to say trillions of dollars worth of materials on an asteroid. But yeah, there are huge untapped resources out there for the people who figure out how to tap them economically.
The trick is figuring out how to do it economically and without killing lots of folks, but there are huge fortunes to be made by someone, some time in the future.
-XT
Money is one of the most abundance substances on earth. It can’t be that hard to find some. Very few people actually find something material to sell for money, and in most cases, even if you do the margin is pretty poor. It’s much easier to convince people to give you money in exchange for a service they find valuable and is in short supply.
And a little luck. If all you need to succeed was talent and hard work, we would be up to our assholes in rich people.
Yes, those are necessary but not sufficient conditions.
Depending on how you define ‘rich’ there are actually quite a few of them out there these days. You can’t swing a dead cat in some places without hitting some ‘rich’ guy or gal right in the face with that ex-kitteh (or, to paraphrase from Monty Python: ‘E’s not pinin’! 'E’s passed on! This swung kitteh is no more! 'E has ceased to be! 'E’s expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed 'im to the scratcher 'e’d be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E’s off the cat nip! 'E’s kicked the bucket, 'e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ THIS IS AN EX-KITTEH!!)
-XT
Those conditions are neither necessary, nor sufficient. Plenty of lazy, talentless people have become successful.
But, of course, probability of a reasonable (if not extravagant) lifestyle IS correlated with talent and diligence.
And it is filled with people competing for that money.