Many of you desire self-sovereignty. Being the master of your own destiny, of not being dependent on evil institutions, or on the benevolence of others is not great. It's a journey and it's not easy. The biggest and most vulnerable point in your general, overall being is your job. It's the attack vector everyone uses to control you. And you probably instinctively protect yourself... by adopting conventional opinions, by not being too out there, by playing lots of office politics, by dutifully doing what's required of you and blaming someone else when things go wrong. You're vulnerable in this area because when your income is entirely from one place, you're essentially controlled by that one place. This is how fiat money is used to control you. They can chop off your livelihood in one shot. Thus, they can demand almost anything. And even if you have really good skills, when you switch jobs, you're subject to yet another central controller. The solution is to decentralize your revenue and not have a single point of failure. Get some side hustles. Figure out how you can make money in lots of little one-offs. When people ask you to do stuff, see if you can sell that as a service. It's through having lots of customers, and not just one, that you become self-sovereign.

Replies (14)

What does fiat have to do with this opinion? A company could simply pay someone in Bitcoin and nothing else in the statement is affected.
dwarner5522's avatar
dwarner5522 2 years ago
Excellent post! I will try to implement some of your advice for sure. You're spot on in that your job is usually the most dominant point of control over your life. Decentralization is basically the anecdote to centralized control vectors.
Alex's avatar
Alex 2 years ago
This is actually useful. I opened Nostr for entertainment but got value instead. YouTube does this sometimes. Yet, watching ads is a heavy price to pay. Here I can Zap voluntarily. Now it’s time earn some Zaps for myself.
Jobs often come with company subsidized or provided healthcare… another major attack vector besides income. Any mentions on how you best manage this with a decentralized revenue approach and no central employer? 🤙🏻
Alex's avatar
Alex 2 years ago
I haven’t tried this, but here is an interesting project from Jimmy Song’s podcast, crowd funded health insurance: Bitcoin Fixes This #90: Economics of Health Care with Andy Schoonover He also has a number of interesting interviews about health care in #21, #86, #87, #91
Ingwe's avatar
Ingwe 2 years ago
So true. And easier said than done. Our family’s income has multiple streams but unfortunately we haven’t made it to the point where losing a primary source won’t be a problem. Keep on building i guess.
Anything you can do to minimise taking action from a place of fear will help you feel more sovereign. Whether that be another income stream, reducing your expenses or saving in hard money, it reduces the amount of fear in your action. Taking action from fear rarely results in the best outcome for you. It reinforces a mindset of scarcity & so that is what you invariably experience. I'll be losing my income in 6 weeks (contact ends). I'm not stressed, but I'm kind of hoping bitcoin goes on a run in July & trying to hold a little more fiat than usual in case that that doesn't happen. I'll not be making a decision based on fear though. I'll be letting the universe find me my next opportunity to deliver value to someone.