Profit In Confusion

There is profit in con­fu­sion. It is an old tac­tic used to unseat gov­ern­ments and shift wealth. It comes in many forms, and it is based on the tem­po­rary human blind spots cre­ated by re-orientation. You notice this when each level of tech­nol­ogy is intro­duced. Each gen­er­a­tion of cell phone offers more bells and whis­tles but requires a lit­tle bit more advanced tech­no­log­i­cal savvy. In the tran­si­tion, you will notice a lit­tle more money seep­ing out of your pocket.

Hid­den taxes abound. Have you ever looked really closely at your bills? Have you ever won­dered what all a ser­vice charge really includes? Have you ever won­dered why you were not con­sulted first before you became respon­si­ble for some addi­tional tax or fee?

It is all pretty humor­ous to a min­i­mal­ist. I can­celled my TV cable the other day. It seems that I can jus­tify the cost dur­ing foot­ball sea­son, and that is about it. After that, I lose inter­est. I sel­dom watch a whole game. I just like the drama and the famil­iar sounds dur­ing the Fall. I don’t really care who wins. It merely serves as a sea­sonal cue for some nos­tal­gic feel­ings I like. Happy is the per­son that can pick and choose what he or she really needs!

There are so many mean­ing­ful ways to live, that I can­not even begin to list them all. We are pre­vented from expe­ri­enc­ing them only because our com­fort zones are so addic­tive (and thus enslav­ing). Jesus roamed the coun­try­side with lit­tle more than what he was wear­ing at the time. His life qual­ity was “eternal” — due to his per­spec­tive. He had it all by own­ing none of it. At times in my life, I have had enough mate­r­ial things to fill a middle-class brick home and as lit­tle as what eas­ily fit into one small car. “How much” was never the ques­tion. “How” was every­thing. Once I could become philo­sophic about it, I could adjust to rad­i­cal finan­cial extremes. The trick to it lies in the imag­i­na­tion.

Beware of any­one doing you a finan­cial or ser­vice “favor.” The more com­plex the details, the more likely you are to miss the actual direc­tion and effect of the cash flow. Change your spend­ing habits and change the world. Want to change Hol­ly­wood? Be more selec­tive about the movies you rent. Want to change the tax struc­ture? Change your phi­los­o­phy of life toward the unseen “king­dom” in which there is never a shortfall.