Wage Freedom » Taking Chances

Wage Iggy

Tom — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:37:19 +0000

…………. I never cared
Once I found out they never dared
To seize the world and shake it upside down
And every stinking bum should wear a crown

photo credit: Michael Markos

…with the ‘stinking bums’ in line for our crown-fittings.

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Digital Media Minute

Tom — Sat, 02 May 2009 07:37:15 +0000

“When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”

Whether you have already used your skills in web development (or any of a thousand flavors of technical expertise) to break out of wage slavery, or you are on the brink of doing so, let me suggest visiting DigitalMediaMinute.com.

Nearly six years old with over 2,272 posts, it is a serious repository of information relevant to web developers, creative professionals, and anyone who uses tech and the net. (Search the site:) You’ll find
fresh productivity tools, how-to guides, programming tutorials, and the best Character Entity Reference on the web.

You will also find a place for commentary on the effects of digital media in the broadest sense on the workplace and our culture.

Detailed enough to be helpful and broad enough in scope to be thought-provoking. It’s where we have been and where we are going.

It’s also the most recent expansion of my own adventures in wage freedom.

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Freedom Through Needing Less

Tom — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 08:23:46 +0000

Half of the sustenance game is ‘getting’. We know how to Get: working more, working harder, working smarter. These are all fitting means to the goal of acquisition. But it’s only half of the picture. The other half is ‘needing’, i.e. the reasons you give yourself for working so hard. Unless you’re a lottery winner you’d better look at the part needing plays in establishing your priorities and motivation, and the toll it may take on your autonomy. It has an enormous effect on the degree of freedom and autonomy you enjoy.

Don’t kid yourself. As hard as you work, you owe it to yourself to also question how much you need, and I mean just as aggressively as you approach the getting, from the time the alarm goes off in the morning until your head hits the pillow at night. The key to increasing your freedom in the short term, today, is found in looking hard at the things that you have decided that you need, the amounts that you let yourself spend.

Is it acceptable for my ‘needs’ to expand to correspond to how hard I’m capable of working? Is it acceptable for my spending to equal and even exceed my best efforts at earning during the best years of my life, so that my time (and even my future, if I’m in debt) is literally traded for these ‘needs’? Probably not, and you might find that needing less is a much easier way to enhance your freedom than making ways to earn more.

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If it doesn’t feel like victory, it probably isn’t.

Tom — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 07:25:31 +0000

Niki Samianus, says the placard on the dashboard.
“Niki Samianus. That sounds like a Baltic rock star.” He smiles charitably, as he does for tourists saying silly things – maybe he’s unfamiliar with the Baltics, and he may not know what a rock star is, even though he is one.

Niki is from the island of Flores, Indonesia, not Lithuania, coming to Bali to find opportunity that is here because of tourism, by driving a Bluebird Taxi.
You’ll want to take Bluebird Taxis when you come to Bali. They’re clean, their drivers have change, and they’ll use the untampered-with meters without prodding, every time. The driving-foreigners-around scene is hyper-competitive and because of their affiliation, Bluebird drivers have a much easier time getting fares (and possibly, making more money) than the guys working for less-organized companies or freelancing. The freelancers stay in business, tenuously as they do, because even two or three good negotiated fares a day might pay for gas, the car and living expenses and because this game is one where the outcome is greatly affected by a driver’s ‘level of commitment’. As a foreigner here I’m accosted by more slowing/horn beeping/rubbernecking from freelance taxi drivers than a supermodel in New York City (I imagine).
Clearly if there is enough competition relative to available opportunity in a given labor market (e.g. taxi driving in Bali), then differentiating yourself as a franchise through an established brand, or outright employment, is a much easier way to go than freelancing. I’ll bet that there is not one taxi driver in Bali who wouldn’t drive for Bluebird if he could, because Indonesia is a country where people would generally prefer simple security to ‘making it big’. Actually for Niki, coming from elsewhere, this job has to be a major victory, suggesting that sometimes earning a wage is the best way to wage one’s freedom. The islands east of Bali are like a step back in time in many ways, and I’m sure that Niki has one hell of an escape story.

But before you accept a psychology of being grateful over expecting better things of you and your life, I’d take a hard look at your situation, and ask if it is as laden with economic hardship as it seems (a la Niki’s life, back in Flores) before accepting employment as the road to More. And how would you know if you are settling beneath your potential, or engaged in activity and goals worthy of your capacities?
If it doesn’t feel like victory, it probably isn’t.

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