[quote user=ThomasBeyer]Hence many folks cannot (yet) afford to only give or help others as they still try to fill their own cup!
"You don`t need a million dollars to start helping people. You can just be a little more creative and start helping people."
"As long as you`re able to keep your living costs low - if you can live on $1,000 a months, or better yet, $700 a month - you don`t need to do anything for anyone, you can just do the occasional little odd-job, and say no to the rest. I really adopted that philosophy, when I was 22. I actually quit my job at Warner Brothers, and that`s the last time I`ve ever had a job. Ever since then, I`ve just found ways of keeping my life very cheap, saying 'no' to the whole advertising industry`s desire to make you want things." - Derek Sivers
"The book follows the often-gripping story of how Derek Sivers founded CDBaby.com in 1998 with $500, grew it to with no outside investors ever, lead the company through hypergrowth, and sold it for $22 million in 2008 when it had grown too large for his leadership tastes."
http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelellsberg/2011/06/29/one-of-the-best-hours-youll-ever-spend/
Some people (like myself) have no interest in helping others. I invest for myself. I accumulate for myself. Aside from the taxes that I pay, society doesn't benefit. This isn't good or bad, it just is.
As an unrelated aside, I find it amusing when I see an expensive car on the road. I feel bad that a simple 9-to-5 marketer can convince a supposedly intelligent individual that they're 'experiencing life' by driving it (or regurgitate statistics and technical specs as if they built it). Power. Performance. Zero-to-stupid in 3 seconds. Smart enough to make millions, but not intelligent enough to recognize, manage, deny base ego-driven impulses or the consequences of being ordinary.
"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into
rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.
"These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only 'forced draft' consumption, but 'expensive' consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole 'do-it-yourself' movement are excellent examples of 'expensive' consumption." - Victor LeBow, 20th Century U.S. Economist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM
Best regards.
