Lets start a new year with a less doom'n'gloomy topic...

I think, that here in the west we all know a few things for certain

1. Sex Sells.
2. Time is Money
3. Money is power.

Lets break it down

1. Sex Sells

Sex sells because we have all been convinced that sex is everything we ever think about (thank you Freud), and so it becomes in a way, a self fulfilling prophecy. We think about sex because we always see sex, and we always see sex because we always think about sex. I don't exactly know which started the cycle, but it's clear from watching only a few minute of the television just HOW MUCH we are being bombarded with - skin tight jeans, cleavage, tv shows like 'cougar', movies like 'american pie'. And the internet certainly hasn't helped in this regard. Sex is quite simply everywhere on the internet, from 'penis enlargement' ads to 'lose weight and look sexy in just 30 days' ads, to straight up pornography (for free!... or is there a price after all?)
Sex doesn't only make a huge amount of revenue, but sex also sedates populations. I can't really prove this, but imagine all the teenagers who are nowadays, basically replacing real sex with ... erm... jerking off. Sorry to be so crude here, but just imagine if they didn't do that, how frustrated and VIOLENT they would become! But, it's fine for now, because they have their internet porn to look at... which by the way, i think raises the standards for what the average woman feels they ought to look like by... quite a margin. I mean, I'm not sure if any of you have watched any porno lately (guilty...) but these women have monstrous proportions sometimes. I mean, it's unreal. I've heard of women getting 'ass jobs', and boob jobs are just about normal in hollywood...

2. Time is Money

Have you ever seen a penny on the ground and picked it up? Well, If you get paid something like, 13 dollars an hour ( i forget the exact numbers and i'm horrible at math) it wouldn't be worth your time to pick the penny up. If you, like me, work every day, 48 hours a week, think of how much spare time you REALLY have

24 * 7 = 168, 168 - 48 = 120, if you sleep a normal 8 hours a day, thats 8 * 7 = 56
120 - 56 = 64, and then an hour or two to get ready TO work, and unwind FROM work, 1.5 * 7 = 10.5, 64 - 10.5 = 53.5, so that's only 53 and a half hours that you have for yourself. Out of 168 hours, you don't even get half of that time to yourself!
Now, that's assuming you're an ordinary working stiff like me... you get 31.84% of time to yourself. Now, that doesn't seem bad until a few facts, that I have learned from various books
It takes 10, 000 hours to become an 'expert' at any craft. thats 416.66 days of continuous 'work'. I am a musician, I play several instruments. Have been playing for about 9 years now. I learned this fact from several resources but, the one I remember it from is "This Is Your Brain On Music" by Daniel Levitin. Assuming that a person didn't work and spent time doing only what they loved, they could become a 'master' or 'expert' at what they do SO MUCH faster! Think of a world where every body did what they loved, whether it be shoe making, music playing, joke telling, banking (hahahaha), owning a store, making food, building, growing, farming.... whatever. I mean, I'm not saying it's really all that possible, because there will always be demands for jobs that perhaps not everybody wants to do, but just imagine how much more we could get done, intellectually, if we weren't FORCED to work. (again not saying its possible)

3. Money is Power

It's a widely believed notion that one can buy anything they want if they have enough money. Anybody with more than two brain cells to rub together knows this isn't true. With enough money you can buy the man power to do whatever you want, but that doesn't always make it possible. Of course, with new technology, comes increasinly high prices. There was a quote from some dude from IBM or something, when the very first computers were running that said... Continued in Next Post

"Computers Will never be sold for personal use" or something to that effect. The quote made perfect sense at the time considering that the computers weighed tonnes, took up the space of an entire large room and didn't really do much other than it was a really big noisy calculator. But look at us now, we have PDA's and Laptops... and windows (unfortunately). There are very strict monopolies that we all live in but we're not really aware of it. In a sense, Money is power, but it doesn't have the power to make you happy. Inversely, actually, the more money you have, you might just end up more miserable, because, sure, you can buy your friends, but "Like Master P said, once yo' paper get low, there they go, there they go" (credits go to Dr. Dre). Money is Power only to people. Money won't sway your cat to like you. Likewise, if any of you have a pet monkey and it start flinging poo at you (literally, SHTF haha) you can't persuade it to stop with a 100 dollar bill. It might look at you funny and throw a nice big one right at your head. We have a very strange way of perceiving things, us humans... What DO WE REALLY OWN? Do you think you own your land, your car, your house, your computer, television... the concept of ownership has pretty much always bothered me about humanity. It's not like in the animal kingdom, you don't 'own' a tree you mark, you simply mark it and you're letting the world know you WILL defend your territory... but with money its all changed. It takes a whole next level of psychology. I think that's why we regard ourselves as more than simply an animal. Our concept of ownership takes on levels of "I worked really hard to buy that, I won't let anyone else have it" but it's not REALLY yours, any more than the money you worked for is yours. I guess, technically, the money is the governments, which makes everything you own the governments. You don't REALLY own anything.. but this time it takes a new meaning, because before when you didn't REALLY own anything, it was because the concept of ownership simply doesn't make sense... but now, you don't REALLY own anything because the government owns it.
Back to point - Money is Power. It's obvious the impact money has had on technology. The more money people have, the more luxuries they expect, so this makes business for technological companies, which makes business for manufacturers, which makes money for people to buy luxuries.
Here's a fact: The Automobile industry is the HIGHEST paying unskilled labour force in America. People who never went to school, dropped out can make, easily, 40-50 dollars an hour doing menial work (which often results in muscle injuries etc but thats another story). These people often live in rich sub-urban areas, and are by far the best example of mindless consumer lifestyle that I believe that humanity, especially the Americas, should stray far far away from and never return.
So, Money is Power, but money isn't empowering. Money is power, but it makes you a slave to it.

So.... I think that's it.

I don't even know why I made this topic, but theres too much predicting going on.... predictions aren't going to get us anywhere, are they?

Have you ever seen a penny on the ground and picked it up? Well, If you get paid something like, 13 dollars an hour

Scientist that I am I tried a simple experiment.

1) Placed a series of pennies at 3 foot intervals.
2) Timed myself walking past the pennies (without picking them up).
3) Timed myself picking them up.

Difference in time (3) - (2) = extra time to pickup pennies.

extra time to pickup pennies / # of pennies = Average increase in time to pick up 1 penny

Average increase in time to pick up 1 penny = 3 seconds.

Picking up 1200 pennies costs me 1 extra hour therefore rate of return for picking up pennies is $12.00 per hour.

Time to respond to this post 22 minutes.

Rate of return for responding to your post = $0.00

Therefore (at least for this researcher) Money is not everything.

reply to post by urwatu8


Haha! Well played, my man. I agree money isn't everything, as well with you. And 'tis a damn shame we don't get paid to post, isn't it? Now that's doin' something I love!

reply to post by urwatu8


watching you picking up 1200 pennies = priceless