Best Way to Make Money

I'll probably return to this theme a lot. There is quite a backstory to this, but in essence I've learned the best way to become rich is to teach (for a fee of course) someone else how to make money. This applies to Real Estate Gurus - see Carelton Sheets, various pyramid schemes such as Amway and Mary Kay, and the Rich Dad guy. I can't say whether "rich dad" and "poor dad" are real people, but I can say the author became a lot wealthier telling people about them.

This also applies to those who do it under the gambit of educating others. There are a lot of attorneys who will for a hefty fee teach other attorneys how to make more money litigating various issues such as Bankruptcy Litigation and Fair Debt Collection.

I have had peripheral involvement in at least two "get rich quick scams" and they are both pretty funny. I also quasi dated a person, who was really into selling some fruit juice called Monavie. These are pretty funny stories.

The reality is there is no template to making a lot of money. Sure you could say "start facebook", "win the lottery", or even "work hard". All of these are true, and will make you rich, but for every guy who wins the lottery millions lose, and many poor people work very hard. I have no doubt some people have a secret to make money, and guess what - they use their know how to make money - for themselves. They would in fact lose money if they taught these secrets to others, as it would no longer be a secret.

Point: If you are paying someone to teach you how to make money, the only person profiting is themselves.

Citizen Initiatives

I think direct democracy sucks. Namely because your average person is some combination of not very smart nor very informed about the issues. Theoretically, elected representatives are supposedly to represent us, but when then fail to do so, we have the ability to goto the ballot to rectify the wrongs. At least this was the idea when citizen referenda were instituted in the Progressive Era.

However, in the modern era, it is about as classic example of astroturfing as it gets. Virtually every citizen initiative seems to take away the rights of a suspect class i.e. gays, immigrants, criminal defendants, and parolees etc.... or they give people what they want i.e. lower taxes, or more services, but no balancing on how to pay for what. I mean you never see an initiative saying maybe incarcerating 1.4 million people is a sign of a deficient criminal justice system.

This article sums it up well. Most insulting in this whole process is Henry Nicholas. He is a big advocate of victims rights, if the accused is poor and preferably non-white. However, for people like him, he is a big fan of things like due process, the 5th amendment and high priced lawyers.