— Money is worthless in a shitty life. First time doing this; rather than search far and wide—sometimes taking upwards of 30 minutes to look for and find a headline image for a post—I just typed “fantasy representation of using money to buy the most expensive things” into a field right here in my WordPress……...

— Thinking differently about changing the world will change your planning, execution, and style Introduction It’s a 4,500-word sea-change of a post, as I continue to hone in on what my Members want the most from me. … Revolutionary change is often hailed as the key to transforming society, but what if we’ve been looking……...

— My Eyes Popped When I Saw The Legal Bill Yea, there were lots of headline images to choose from with guys in business suits shaking hands, making a deal. BORING! Plus, the design is awful (I laughed out loud and knew I had to use it), so I figured you’d figure I cobbled it……...

— Enough to cover anyone's lifetime

Just over a week ago I was asked a question about investing in today's climate, so I did a video and intended to write a more detailed post in the next day or so, then procrastinated until last Wednesday, and then I was off on another pack-the-backpack spontaneous travel thing, as documented in my last newsletter (free by email).

If all things work together for good, then this delay surely worked out because I now have a whole new laugh to mock, involving a 30-year-old losing people's billions of dollars.

Yes, it's a laughing matter.

Sorry not sorry. How many times is shit like this going to happen before people stop chasing just another turn on playing the lottery? I can't count the times over the last few years I've been told about various too-good-to-be-true-or-lasting deals, where you supposedly get a lot of free money. "Money," I should say.

You know, just because something has better maths doesn't mean it's good maths. Lots of stuff is better than shit and that's not saying much. I'll speak to crypto and its latest lost-billions fiasco down below. The quote I use in the headline image will tie into that, primarily.

...Everyone is an investor. The difference amounts to what's the nature of the investment. When people say they invest in stocks, bonds, funds, real estate, startups, et al, they're just using common lingo to make distinctions, which is fine. But, there are many things to invest in and what I intend to do here is draw the most critical and wide-scope integral distinction you'll ever consider.

You might be left wondering why you never looked at it like that.

Topics

• The Financial Markets
• Tax Sheltering

  • Story: How My Company Was Penalized For Giving Away Too Much Money

• Real Estate

  • Vacation Rentals: The Sure Big Bucks in R/E!
  • Potential Investment in R/E With Vacation Rental Level Income

• Crypto

  • FTX Fiasco (LOL)

• Entrepreneurship and Geoarbitrage for Max Gains

Since the video is already public, here it is, to be viewed as a scant introduction to this post. If it's only appetite wetting, feel free to get more. It doesn't cover much on vacation rentals and almost nothing on crypto, for example. It sets a tone, though.

The membership for unfettered access to everything at all times is $6 per month, $50 per year, or $250 lifetime. I've been at this for 19 years this month (03 November 2003 was post #1) so it's a good bet I'll be at it long enough into the future to make lifetime the best investment. Plus, the price of membership doubles 01 January 2023 across the board. If you're thinking of popping for it before then, what better time than now?

— But Can't You Just Escape It? The Short Answer Is No.

The Basics

The problem is that for better or worse, marketing qua marketing is essential. And the other problem is that if there's sound marketing then there's hyped, bullshit marketing. ...Bad with the good, or tolerable. There's a straightforward chain of requirements for a decent life that culminate in the essential of marketing.

1. Life requires a lot of values just to survive, and lot more to prosper and live comfortably and happily.
2. It's near impossible for an individual to acquire or produce all that's needed for bare survival, let alone prosperity.
3. So we're social beings, endowed with a certain natural division of labor based upon gender (and at the un-woke extreme of that...only one gender can get pregnant), age, stature, physical prowess, intelligence, creativity, imagination, fortitude, talents, etc.
4. In the families and small tribes of old, there was no need for marketing because...everyone knew what everyone else produced.

In the barest sense, marketing is merely getting word out to those who need it but don't know about it. It is the creation and facilitation of markets (i.e., trade) that otherwise doesn't exist.

So that's good and there's a lot of good in it. And there's even more good. It's the sort of marketing where a legitimate need is identified but products don't exist; so marketing becomes a dual role of outright creation—or sourcing and integrating—then fulfillment to customers. The greatest marketing good is that which envisions the unimagined but possible, creating the products or services, and then making—not filling—the [nonexistent] market for that product or service.

Marketing is the mother of invention. It's the quintessential question that asks: 'what if there was...?'

...But, alas, humans wouldn't be human if the race didn't include the lazy legions among us who take shortcuts...producing a mountain of shit...then writing ad copy to urgently sell—BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!—its sweet aroma downwind.

And so long as people keep buying, they'll keep producing [the crap], marketing, and selling it. We've all fallen victim, succumbed...too heavy on unbridled exuberance, hopes, and fantasy while being too light on discipline, thought, and self-control.

Anti Marketing

That phenomena—and no need to describe it further because we're all intimately familiar, being inundated with it all the time—gives rise to a method dubbed anti-marketing.

That's the headline at this page for an ad agency owner. The copy following it continues in the same vein. I got wind of that because I sent a link to this post of mine mocking standard sales copywriting while using it myself tongue-in-cheek. (It's a post kicking off the 10-day paid-membership promotion we're in. So, you probably won't want to take a look.) Anyway, I sent it to Kelvin Parker, a marketer and copywriter I've known forever, and he shot me back that link.

I then proceeded to improve upon it.

WARNING: You’re Now On The Cusp of a Sales Funnel. This is Your Last Chance to ESCAPE! Once in the Funnel, There IS NO ESCAPE. You Will Be Motivated to Buy a Small Thing and Then We Exhaust Every Last Gram of Your Resolve With Upsell Offers AFTER You Have Paid, But BEFORE Your Order is Confirmed. And EVEN IF You Manage to Weather That Onslaught, Rest Assured That We Have Your Email Address and You’ll Be Hearing From Us (A LOT).

So, I suppose the bottom line in all of this is that you can always be real in your various marketing efforts to make a living and if universes collide, become prosperous.

You can even use all the bullshit copy stuff to your advantage through mockery.

All The Rest

This is an ironic sort of post; in that, the rest of it covers other basics loosely referred to as microeconomics and because of my affirmations and protestations therein, I'm going to have to cut it off here for the free members and public. Paid membership details, here. Hurry, before it's too late!

This is a fairly tight presentation where I discuss the microeconomics of the firm:

1. Willingness to pay
2. Some will never pay no matter what
3. Free stuff
4. Nothing is free
5. Piracy
6. Free marketing
7. Ads
8. Loss Leaders
9. Etc.

And I have a remarkably tight video I shot on a whim a while back, sorta forgot about it but one thing to another and I gave it a looksee and I liked it. Yea, get this...I watched my own video and far from wincing, it held my interest.

I damn near popped corn in coconut oil, taking the time as well to clarify butter.

Maybe it'll doya too.