“Own Nothing Control Everything” – John D Rockefeller
While it’s still not clear what Rockefeller was talking about. I’ll take a guess he was talking about using Trusts or modern day Limited Liability Company (LLC)’s to hold the assets which he could control, protecting his family form financial predators.
The world today is changing so fast – yet these words are ringing true…
Learning to code will probably be more useful than learning a language. Why you ask? Because software is disrupting traditional industries. Those who master it will inherit the earth. No question that software is eating the world, as Marc Andreessen famously wrote. Software is now core to producing just about every good or service we consume.
Today, Uber doesn’t own any cars. Airbnb doesn’t own any properties. Netflix doesn’t own any DVDs. Youtube doesn’t own any content. Amazon, doesn’t own a physical storefront. Linkedin doesn’t own any resumes. Don’t even think about what Google or Facebook owns…
So would owning physical assets and products matter anymore? Or what about the currency in your pocket. Who owns that?
“Let me issue and control a Nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws” – A.B.M. Rothschild
If you don’t own the currency you work so hard for. What is the point of all that work?
If I told you MONEY is a CONCEPT – you’d think I’d gone crazy. Stay with me…
What is a currency or bank note – it’s a piece of paper. What is a cheque it’s a piece of paper. Both have something written on it.
If you take a $1 note and $100 note – what is the difference, both are made out of paper – they have some writing on it. But how does it get it’s value?
I wrote on a post-it note $1 and gave it to you and said it was worth $1, would you believe me? Ok, what if I told a friend who is standing near by that he would accept that post-it note with “1” written on it. You could exchange it for a cup of coffee. Would it have value? Yes, it would.
What would make sure that the friend would exchange it for a cup of coffee that he had… well, he could exchange it with someone else… and so on.
The only reason that piece of paper has some value is because there’s a DEMAND for it. So long as people can exchange it for something, they’re ok.
Now if I just took another post-it note and wrote 100 on it, and gave it to you… from experience you would have learned that 1 is worth something and so 100 is worth something more.
But wait a sec, nothing changed for me… I just added two more zeros on the end of a 1 and gave you a new piece of paper.
Where’s the value of the note then? It’s perceived. So long as I can convince other’s that what I have written is of value – then others will continue to accept it.
This my friend is how money is created today… its a concept. So the more I’m printing – the harder you’re working and exchanging things.
Well, take the concept of currency and replace it with “Life Energy“.
We have a limited life of approximately 20,000 days, you’re probably half way there already. Time is limited, which is why our perception of time changes during our life, in our early years, we feel that we have all the time in the world. As we grow older, we find time flying so quickly… maybe because we know we have only half of what we used to have.
Life Energy is a person’s time and value stored. We use it to exchange things…
Another way of looking at money is as a piece of paper that you trade for time.
[Tweet “TIME = MONEY is not theory but law. When used, it is to buy time, when made, it is to sell time.”]The only part of the equation that can distort the time, is by adding VALUE. People perceive value differently. Higher quality (value) fetches more money.
And that’s why these the two things I need to protect – time and money. I have to invest both of them properly. And just as with money, your time has a bank balance. When you withdraw from it, you’re depleting your finite resource. I wish it could be topped up or replenished, but you can reduce the drawdowns by making sure the withdrawal is worth it and not wasted. This is why we say time is money.
Which is why when you understand time and money, you become a danger to those around you. The problem with chasing ‘money’, is that you will never understand the ‘value’ of it. Chasing ‘experiences’ on the other hand, will help you understand the true value of time, rather than money.
You can manipulate your environment to increase your Life Energy. This is why self-help gurus, are able to make money from you – they know that through out your life, you’ve been trained to see money from different perspectives, it’s always pervading your life, it’s ingrained and holds so much weight in your life.