You Must Love the Process
“I’m not doing any work unless I’m paid for it” While this statement is written specific enough that maybe many people think they aren’t guilty of it themselves, it’s my belief that almost all of us are guilty of this, and we need to break free of it. The problem is that we have set up our society in a way so that we negotiate salary at the start of employment, setting a standard of value, no matter who applies. This runs directly counter to how investors and entrepreneurs make money, by investing capital and taking on risk up front than working to create a return afterward. In traditional employment, the employer has to take all the risk: an unknown employee only vetted by resume and a few hours of interview, and they have to commit to putting up all the capital before a single finger is lifted by the new employee. It would be extremely short-sighted to think that this behavior on such a large scale doesn’t directly affect the mindset and expectations of our population, of course, it does and it’s obvious if you look at how people invest their time. Some people will tell you it’s because “kids these days are so entitled”, which is obviously false, people today aren’t different than they were 12,000 years ago. As a country, we have been fortunate enough to create a system where we can assign a value to someone’s work BEFORE they actually go to work. While on a whole this is fantastic for our society, but as an individual it’s misleading and a hindrance, what if a person is worth more than the set value of their job? This “equality of outcome” style of economics strips people of having to take the risk or the burden of having to prove for their worth in the marketplace, it results in people taking less risk, and being less willing to work without a financial output guaranteed beforehand.