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Comment by sparks1970 | Hacker News Reader

sparks1970

Might be worth stepping back and thinking about why you want to make money. Money is a store of opportunity but useless in itself. If you were to be shipwrecked with no hope of rescue would you rather be washed up with a cargo container of dollar bills or camping gear?

So what is it you really want? What are you hoping the money will buy you?

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This is insightful at first glance, but throw out the shipwrecked part, and you cover a 99% coverage of scenarios where being in a cargo container full of money would provide tremendous value over a cargo container filled with camping gear.

Thus, having more money in itself will provide a tremendous hedge and perform as a greater value above and beyond other alternatives.

The original poster says, "I want to make money". OK, if they were handed $1B what would they do with it? What do they really want? Physical security? Financial security? Political influence? Love? Hedonism? Existential meaning?

The shipwreck analogy is a tool to help you understand that you want money for what you can do with it, not for itself.

Extra points if you make some discoveries about yourself when asking why you want these things.

At a point in my life I treated my income per month as game score for many years, I guess it will be category of hedonism ?

It seems like this and parent intriguing comments are both skirting(?) the importance of -context- in the debate over "money" vs "better world". People from all walks of life may choose one or the other based on their status,philosophy,etc. Overall though, I think the ability to choose "better world" comes from a more privileged place, which might make the "crate full of money" enable a more people to choose "better world" more frequently.

Ignoring the “no hope” clause and in the spirit of entertainment: some napkin math has a 40ft shipping container holding around $60m in dollar bills. People would look a lot harder for that than camping gear!

Does «provide decent quality of life for my family and freedom for me” sound good enough?

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