Follow the Money...

Americans have been complaining about the decline of our school system for years (decades, maybe?). Yet nothing seems to change. Not for the better at least.

There’s a big disconnect between what we want our kids to get out of school and what’s actually being provided, and I believe much of it is due to the way we measure scholastic success.

Most of us seem to think that some sort of learning should result from attending school. We expect children to understand concepts and how to apply them in real-world situations. But current testing procedures only assure that students memorize how to apply specific knowledge to a specific situation.

If we feed our children rote memorization and test-taking tactics, should we be surprised when they graduate high school without actually understanding anything? An “A” in algebra doesn’t necessarily mean they can apply it in real-world situations. You are what you eat.

We can’t expect true understanding of subject matter to occur unless we can determine better methods for measuring results.

Patriotism
- noun
Devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty.

While living abroad I was often offended when people would harshly – and, I thought, unfairly – criticize America (the land that I love). As I grew older (and more cynical) I became increasingly critical of certain aspects of my own nation, and started to sympathize more with those who had offended me in the past. Though I still disagree with many of their viewpoints, I’m no longer bothered by their criticisms, but instead see it as an opportunity to explore the ideas, motivations and perceptions that lead to and result from U.S. policies.

I love my country, and all the people that make it great. I want our nation to thrive, and I want all to experience the type of freedoms envisioned at its inception. Unfortunately, not all politicians share this sentiment.

Patriotism is love for your nation, not for your government. Government should exist only to serve the people - not the other way around. If you really love America, then question its institutions.

You may or may not agree with Ron Paul’s conclusions about the validity of the war in Iraq, but he expresses an important perspective on what it means to be patriotic.

My assumption in all of this (in general) is that you really do want to quit your job, but you’re just not sure if it’s the right time yet. I assume this because I can’t comprehend anyone actually wanting to be demoralized by working for someone else their entire life. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to do their own thing as long as they thought it was achievable and profitable.

1. Learn on Someone Else’s Dime

Working for someone else is a great way to learn an industry. Coming out of school, you have a lot of theory. It’s a nice background, but worth little without some real hands-on experience. If you start out on your own, you’ll learn quickly from your own mistakes. If you start out working for someone else, you’ll also learn from your mistakes - but your employer pays for them!

2. Fund Personal Projects

Let’s face it, some careers are just more lucrative than others. If you have a brilliant idea and means to launch it immediately, maybe you can start making money right away. Professional blogging or novel-writing, on the other hand, won’t make you rich from the get-go. Becoming an Internet entrepreneur is the dream of many, but if you have mouths to feed at home, don’t quit your day job yet! A full-time job can provide stable income to help get you get your personal projects off the ground. The money keeps coming in while you keep testing potential money-makers.

3. Save Money to Invest in Your Own Business

Small sums of money to fund personal projects are great for testing the waters, but what happens when you need to invest in a full-fledged business idea? You could get investors to help out, but in many cases you’ll want to fund the business yourself and keep 100% ownership. Fortunately, the cost of starting your own business online decreases every year, putting this dream within reach. Working a day job for a few years can help you save enough cash to launch the next Internet phenomenon.

4. Try Out a New Career or Industry Before Committing

Still not sure what you want to do when you grow up? Try it before you buy it!

5. Maintain Benefits Until You Can Afford to Walk Away

Self-employment is wonderful, but health care costs for the self-employed are astronomical (well, a bit more astronomical than you’d pay as an employee). Delay quitting your job to keep your insurance until you’re sure you can make enough money to afford it on your own.

6. Maintain Stable Cash Flow (a regular paycheck)

The upside potential of self-employment is huge, but your monthly income could fluctuate dramatically, especially in the early stages of self-employment. If uncertainty frightens you, full-time employment should help set your fears at ease (just disregard the fact that “job security” is a fallacy and you could get “downsized” at any time).

7. Be Lazy and Marginally Productive

No lies, striking out on your own takes a great amount of work. If getting by on the bare minimum is more your style, than employment may be your best choice.

8. Convince Lenders That You are Loan-worthy

If you need to borrow money in order to finance your business, good luck getting loans without any proof that you’ll be able to repay them.

9. Don’t Leave Money on the Table

If you know a large raise or bonus is coming up soon, you might feel it’s worth sticking it out until you can collect that extra cash.

10. Give Yourself Time and Resources to Learn New Skills

These may be skills intended to help you start your own business later. Or, let your employer pay to further your education.

11. (Bonus!) You Truly Enjoy Your Job

Maybe you actually love your day job (a rare breed, indeed). The question I would ask is, “Could you do the same thing without having a boss?” Wouldn’t that be better?

We routinely put teenagers in an environment where the majority of their time is spent with other teenagers.

Where do they and their peers get their cues for social development? From a few aggressive industries with profit agendas - media (music/film/etc.), fashion and other products that provide little value, but help to extend childhood far past its natural end.

Where should they get their cues for social development? Not from other teenagers taking their cues from advertisers. Childhood is about becoming an adult. Sure, kids need time to play and “be children” (some of the best educational development comes from unfettered free time). But ultimately the younger years are spent preparing and learning how to survive the older years. Once they’ve past puberty, most teens have greater decision-making capabilities than society gives them credit for.

Teenagers won’t learn how to grow up by spending all their time together. They should be learning from the people they are about to become - adults. If we keep treating them like children, they’ll remain that way.

All information is biased.

Each piece of information you consume is filtered by the bias of the relaying party. The more parties that filter information before it reaches you, the more bias is introduced.

The closer you can get to the original source of information, the less bias that will exist. Thus, the least biased assessments will usually come from direct personal experience.

And yet, personal experience is still biased, because past interactions shape your perception of current experiences. In other words, you and I could witness the exact same event but come away with completely different meanings because our distinct past experiences cause us to distill the same event differently.

Your past experiences create personal biases and establish your worldview. You use this worldview to accept or reject the validity of new information, which further reinforces your biases.

Do you think CNN presents unbiased reporting while Fox is just entertainment packaged as news? Do you think Fox is fair and balanced while CNN promotes a liberal agenda? Many people fall into one of those mindsets - both are right. And both are wrong. You could try to argue which news source is more accurate, but you’d be foolish to assume that either source was unbiased.

Total objectivity is a fallacy.

Once you can accept this fact, the choice is then yours to determine how to distill the information you consume.

A friend told me something rather profound:

There’s no such thing as quality time. There’s only time.

I know a lot of people who are complete workaholics. I certainly admire industrious and hard-working attitudes, in fact I promote it. But a life-well-lived needs some balance, and children need their parents.

The workaholics’ normal excuse goes something like this, “I don’t see my family very often, so on the rare occasions that I’m home, I make sure to spend some quality time with them.”

What is “quality time?” Do you really think 1 hour of “bonding” can make up for your absence the rest of the week?

Building [happy] family relationships takes time, and that means time spent together. Take your spouse on dates; read with your children; go on family vacations. You can’t compress it all into just a couple of hours per week. This is not one of those situations where quality can make up for quantity - you need both.

Anyone who’s worked for a corporation has had plenty of moments where they wish they didn’t. Bosses make ridiculous demands; co-workers procrastinate and make you pick up the slack; no one listens to reason when you tell them the obvious. It would be so much easier to succeed if you had the authority to call the shots. The movie Office Space is so funny because while the characterizations seem exaggerated on-screen, they’re actually very close to the real thing.

1. Get Paid What You’re Worth

If you’re on salary or hourly wages, you’re likely not getting paid what you’re worth. Your job title and job description determine an acceptable “industry standard” salary range, and your potential earnings have an upward limit. If you’re lucky, your pay structure may have an additional bonus or performance-based compensation component, in which case you’re probably getting underpaid on your regular salary (because if you happen to meet all your goals and achieve the full compensation, HR wants to make sure you’re not getting overpaid).

If you work for a company and come up with an idea that makes a million dollars in profit, how much of that goes into your pocket?

When you work for yourself, you get to keep the full benefit of your labor and ideas. Your earning potential is not capped.

2. Follow Your Own Passions

How much do you love your current job? If you didn’t get paid for it, would you still be interested?

Even if accounting or marketing or programming or whatever you’re doing now isn’t the love of your life, you’ll be much more passionate about working when you’re doing it for yourself.

3. Fire Your Boss

C’mon, you know you’d like to do it. No more taking orders. Answer only to yourself, not to the CEO’s dimwit brother who knows less about your job than you do.

4. Make Your Own Schedule

Last December I planned for a month-long vacation in February. Got the departmental approvals and had wonderful time in Thailand. In March, HR informed me that my vacation days were at -5. I lost 40 hours in January because there was a cap on how many I could roll over from the previous year. “You signed the employee handbook when you started working here, so you should have known.” Apparently, the signed approvals I got before the new year didn’t mean anything anymore, and it’s all my fault. Essentially, I owe my company money now (paid in lost vacation).

The self-employed often work harder, but at least they can make their own schedule. My suggestion - arrange your work schedule to allow you to spend more time with your family.

5. Work During Your Peak Performance Times

I always told myself that if I started my own business, my employees - those that were information workers - would only work 4 hours per day. Why? Because I know that if I could leave work after four hours, I would get more done than all the other people in my department who worked for eight.

Forcing people to work for a specific period of time doesn’t improve productivity - quite the opposite. Self-employment allows you to work during those times when you know you’ll be most productive, according to your natural productivity cycle.

6. Reduce Your Tax Burden

Working for a corporation provides you with one of the harshest tax burdens available. First, the corporation gets taxed, which they pass on to you by limiting your salary. Then, the government taxes you again, seizing your wages before you even get a chance to touch it. Essentially, you suffer from double-taxing.

By going the self-employed route, you can reduce that tax burden significantly. By structuring your business entity properly, you can avoid double taxation altogether (e.g. as a sole proprietor, where you would just report your earnings as income). Even if you set yourself up as a corporation, you can keep your salary low and reinvest most of your profits in the business, thus reducing the income portion of your tax burden. The point is, you at least have some options that wouldn’t otherwise exist as an employee.

7. Write Off Expenses

This relates nicely with #6. As a business owner, many of the daily activities you perform and pay for can be deducted as business expenses. Taking clients out to lunch, business-related traveling costs, a percentage of home utilities (if you keep a home office) and expensive computer equipment can all become write-offs. Expenses help reduce your taxable income, thus reducing your tax burden. For instance, if you’re a sole proprietor, this directly reduces your adjusted gross income and can help put you in a lower tax bracket.

8. Stop Trading Your Time for Money

The whole premise of employment puts you at a major disadvantage. If you’re getting paid only for the amount of time you work, then you’re not reaping the full potential of your labor (your employer, on the other hand, is). By working for yourself, you can easily find ways to generate income even when you’re not working, thereby placing value on what you create, not on the amount of time it took you to create it.

9. Secure Your Future

Your employer only needs you as long as you’re giving them what they want. The idea of “job security” is an illusion. It can all end with just two words: “You’re fired.”

If, however, you’re self-employed, then you’ve effectively saved yourself from ever being in a position where you can be fired. If you under-perform, I suppose you could always fire yourself. But, since you’re the boss, you can immediately hire yourself to another position.

No job is as secure as the one you make for yourself.

10. Own What You Create

When you work for someone else, your value is marginalized and they reap the long-term benefits of your labor and ideas. You are just a unit of labor; your production is their property. Why be a slave?

If you’re already working your tail off, why not own the output?

11. (Bonus!) Freedom

This one sort of encompasses all the rest and really gets to whole point of self-employment.

Working conditions. Location. Style. Office decorations. Availability. Work philosophy. Priorites. Hours of operation. Scale. Goals. Mission. Anything. Everything.

When all is said and done, you are your own master.

Darwin’s theories on evolution may have revolutionized science, but they also sent society down a slippery slope towards amorality.

The concepts embodied in evolution had great influence over the business minds of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Social Darwinism was used to justify racism, low-wage workers for mass production and mass-schooled children for low-class job recruiting. It can be argued that Darwin’s ideas were improperly applied, but they were strong influences nonetheless.

One of the most destructive themes to emerge from this period is the idea of moral relativism. With God out of the picture and no hope for life after death, the human condition was reduced to feral and morality became only a convention of circumstance with no “right answer.” The predominant philosophy became, “Whatever is, is right.”

This new belief system emerged much to the benefit of the corporate world. The highest moral standard was based on the success of the business (survival of the fittest). Anything was fair grounds as long as it kept the shareholders happy and didn’t flagrantly break any laws. Every situation could have its own ethical standards that need not apply to other situations. And sadly, this depraved moral philosophy is promoted by our school systems, preparing our children to become good employees.

Although Big Business relied heavily on natural selection theories to justify their misdeeds, the concept of moral relativity certainly existed well before Darwin.

I grew convinc’d that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life; and I form’d written resolutions, which still remain in my journal book, to practice them ever while I lived.- Benjamin Franklin

Even Ben Franklin was a proponent of variable ethics in his youth. He wrote pamphlets while working for a printer in England about how “vice and virtue were empty distinctions.” It didn’t take him too long to change his mind and realize that those doctrines of relative ethics were not very useful.

The truth of the matter is that we all need morals. Not flexible ones that we can change at will; we need strong, steadfast, guiding principles that lead us unwaveringly through our lives. Without that, we are but chaff in the wind, subject to a worrisome existence of dubious relationships and conflicted conscience.

Fortunately, we are not all beholden to the fate prepared for us by the robber barons.

Like Ben Franklin, we can make a conscious choice to live morally

I’ve learned a thing or two within my lifetime, and I’m certain there’s a lot more yet to learn. But as I think back on my childhood, I increasingly realize that I learned most of the really important stuff outside of school (ironic, given that I spent more waking hours in school than I did at home).

Here are some of the most important things I’ve learned in life (and didn’t learn at school):

The joy of work

Homework is rarely fun, but self-directed work is both exciting and fulfilling. Building forts, mowing yards, rubbing my mother’s feet for nickels - learning how to work didn’t just make pennies for my piggy bank, it made fond memories and rich experiences.

The joy of service

As fulfilling as work is, I think I found even more happiness in serving others with no thought of reciprocation. I can attribute much of this to good parents, active religious associations and dedicated Boy Scout leaders. From collecting canned goods for charity to repairing hurricane victims’ homes to dedicating a couple of years of my life to full-time voluntary missionary service - these are educational experiences that text books can’t give you.

Creativity

I believe that children are naturally creative. In general, school tends to stifle creativity, putting kids in the habit of only doing what they’re told instead of expressing themselves in unique ways. I applaud those teachers who try to provide creative outlets for their students.

I recall one such teacher in the eighth grade. A few of my classmates and I expressed some interest in creating some humorous videos (In Living Color was popular at the time). Our teacher encouraged us to pursue this whim and even let us use some class time to brainstorm our ideas. He also arranged to get us a VCR and TV in class one afternoon to show our videos to the rest of the class. We did the work after school and on weekends at home, using our parents’ video cameras and VCRs to film and edit. The final product consisted of several comedy skits and a voice-over scene of Jean-Luc Picard and two scantily-clad Klingon women. Fortunately, this was long before the days of YouTube, so there won’t be a permanent record of embarrassment.

Though we were fortunate to have a teacher who encouraged our creativity, he was an exception. The creativity, however, didn’t come from schooling. It came from our natural desires to experiment and from trying to find something to do during the few moments when we weren’t burdened by school work.

How to forgive

My brother is 21 months older than me. Because of our close age, we did a lot of things together growing up. One of those things was fighting. He threw chairs at me. I chipped his tooth with a trumpet.Boys will be boys.

And moms will be moms.

And thanks to a patient mother’s teachings of forgiveness (and forcing us to sit on the couch and hold hands for five minutes as punishment for fighting), my brother and I have managed to remain friends thirty years later (but we don’t hold hands anymore).

How to take responsibility for my actions

When I was about 12 years old, one of the kids in the neighborhood tried for weeks to get me to fight him. I had no desire to fight him. He hadn’t done anything to offend me, so I didn’t really see the point. I kept putting him off, saying I couldn’t fit him into my busy schedule, but he and several other neighborhood kids persisted until I relented.

When the fight started, I remember seeing his drunk parents cheering us along with all the other neighborhood kids (they encouraged their children to pick fights often). The fight had just begun when out of the corner of my eye, from across the street, I noticed my father emerge from our front door. The look on his face was not, “I’m coming to save you, son.” It was more like, “don’t worry about that other boy hitting you, because I’m going to kill you myself.” He strode over to where we were fighting, grabbed my the hair, dragged me into the house and tossed me into my bed.

I don’t recall Dad ever saying anything to me about the fight again. And, as far as I know, he never talked to the other boy or approached his parents. But the lesson to me was clear: it doesn’t matter what everyone else was doing, I was fighting - and that’s not acceptable. I couldn’t control the belligerent neighbors, but I should be able to control myself.

How to love someone

Going to school didn’t teach me how to treat a woman with respect, how to help an elderly neighbor or how to make a baby laugh. School didn’t teach me how to say sorry or how to make up with my brother after a fistfight or how to send thank you cards after Christmas and birthdays. These are all things I learned at home (and rightfully so). I was lucky to have loving parents and grandparents who set good examples; I was fortunate to marry an amazingly patient woman; I was blessed to have a beautiful baby boy. Love doesn’t come from textbooks, it comes from living.

• How to classify people based on criteria that ultimately aren’t the end-all-be-all of a life well-lived
• How to exclude others due to “inferior” intellects
• How to force children to perform tasks in which they show neither interest nor inclination
• How to separate children into arbitrary groups based on age and ability, which limits their experiences and personal growth and creates an educational caste system

Someone once told me that despite all of his evil attributes, you have to at least give the devil credit for being persistent. In this optimistic vein I therefore offer some positive aspects of mass schooling:

• It teaches you a strong work ethic
• It prepares you for the cut-throat world of corporate employment (where you’ll likely end up after so many years of mass schooling, not realizing that you have other options)
• It teaches you the arbitrary and flexible nature of ethics (which aligns perfectly with corporate philosophies where anything is acceptable as long as you don’t get caught and you maintain your loyalty to shareholders)