Your Money Or Your Life is the ultimate guide to financial freedom, as it explores nine effective ways to stop living paycheck to paycheck, get out of debt, earn enough money to make more than just a living, and start living your life worry free from a financial point of view.They say that money is the root of all evil, yet the lack of it doesn’t seem to make us happy either. In fact, the lack of it makes us crave it even more. We put time and effort until we reach that state where we’re finally free. However, some waste a lifetime in this trap, without ever achieving their goal.

Your Money Or Your Life – Book Summary

Living debt-free is what most of us aspire. Having more sources of income and being able to celebrate the important moments in life. With more money, we can take care of our dear ones. All of these are the goals for those who weren’t born with a silver spoon. However, too many of us fail at fulfilling them because the financial system is wicked and we haven’t yet found the formula for success, or have we?Your Money or Your Life teaches you how to improve your relationship with money and achieve financial freedom, which means having enough to live a meaningful life and not stress about money.

<ul><li>Financial independence comes with knowing your net worth, your current earnings, and your past expenses.</li><li>Budgeting and evaluating subcategories in your income and expenses sheet will help you assess much more than just money.</li><li>Invest your hard-earned money so that they don’t depreciate in time. </li></ul>If you‘re ready to transform your relationship with money, keep on reading, as we’ll explore each lesson in detail below!

Here are my three favorite lessons from the book:

Any good plan has a foundation or a starting point. If you want to improve your relationship with money, you’ll first have to find out how much of it you’re spending. Start by tracking all your past income and summing it up. Use old resumes, paychecks, or even information from the Social Security Administration.

Lesson 1: The first step towards financial independence is to calculate your net worth, your expenses, and your earnings to the 

Sum it up, and make sure to include cash gifts and other income received in your life. Now, take a look at how much you currently have. Include cash, money in the bank, stocks or bonds at the current market value, and your fixed assets, like a car or a house. Liabilities like mortgage, car payments, and debts should be accounted for as well.

With budgeting comes a clearer record of your income and expenses. While it gets easier to track your expenditures, you get a fresh perspective on something bigger than that. Your life energy-to-satisfaction ratio. Let me explain!

Lesson 2: Build an evaluation system to assess if the life energy spent working is worth the satisfaction received

Essentially, when you’re trading your time to work and get paid, you’re giving away precious life energy. All of this will be in exchange for money that you use to buy necessities and pay for a life worth living. Now, if you put that down into numbers, you’ll see that you’re paid a certain hourly rate. But it takes time to prepare for work and money to buy work supplies, such as clothes or razors. Therefore your net income per hour may be much smaller than you thought.

To put that into perspective, ask yourself if what you’re working for has a good life energy-to-pay ratio, and if not, consider lowering the costs associated with eating out, for example. If you don’t feel like giving away 20 hours of your life to pay for restaurant dates, you’ll have to reconsider this habit. If you’re comfortable and it aligns with your value, reconsider other expense categories.

Studies suggest that people who focus heavily on money, positions, or conventional success are highly probable to suffer from depression and increased anxiety. Instead, invest your precious hours worked and your money into things that relate to yourself and make you happy.

One of the last parts of this book is about investing, which implies placing your money in assets such as bonds, stocks, or even real estate, to produce more income in the long run. So, where do you start? People often think about investing as something risky, but that’s just because they don’t know how to do it.

Lesson 3: Let your money make more money for you while you focus on other aspects of your life

Essentially, you’ll want to opt for the safest securities out there, especially if you’re new to the game. You don’t need a financial advisor, but you will need to decide how much you want to allocate each month. This allocation will be based on how much you’ll need in the long run. Also, it’s safe to assume that you need to put aside six months worth of expenses before you start.

Investing is risky in the short run, as your securities can drop in value and you’ll find yourself in need of that emergency fund. However, they can produce a lot of wealth in the long run, so you’ll want to play that game by opting for treasury bonds, exchange traded funds, and when you start to understand the game a bit more, you can pick certain companies yourself, but only with a small percentage of your investing funds.

Your Money or Your Life explores the idea of money from a broader perspective, starting with the importance of calculating your net worth, all the way to investing your spare funds. The book will help you budget better. Learn the basic principles of investing, start an emergency fund, calculate your real pay and many more! Reading this book is a must for anyone looking to reach financial freedom and get serious about their money status.

Your Money or Your Life – Book Review

The 35-year-old person who wants to start being more money-conscious and save for retirement. The 23-year-old graduate who has a great interest in finance and investment opportunities. Or the 28-year-old who wants to take charge of their financials to live a more meaningful life.

Who would I recommend the Your Money Or Your Life to?

“If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.”-Vicki Robin

Author Quote

Your Money Or Your Life summary is the ultimate guide to financial freedom, showing nine effective ways to stop living paycheck to paycheck.

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Personal Development

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Money & Investments

Your Money Or Your Life Summary

“Privacy is the foundation of free societies.”

“Sort of the ultimate Tamagotchi, the blockchain is a globally distributed nest egg.”

One of the biggest challenges to the adoption of blockchain technology is education.It is a highly technical topic that one cannot fully learn and understand in one briefing, meeting or discussion. It truly takes a concerted study.

Challenges in adopting blockchain

However, it took a while for people to realize how useful it was. Similarly, Bitcoin is the currency that will power blockchain technology in this century.But before you can understand its usefulness, you need to know how to use it and earn your first bitcoins.

The internet is the backbone of our modern world

You might be skeptical of a seller who refuses to use banks or notaries, and for good reason. Banks have long served as the middleman between buyers and sellers by authenticating transactions and ensuring that property titles are correct. However, there’s no guarantee that the bank itself is trustworthy. Banks can go bankrupt and lose money by making bad deals, companies like Uber sell customer data without getting consent from customers, and governments are capable of going bankrupt themselves.

Trusting banks

<ul><li>The internet is a powerful tool for communication, but it lacks the security necessary to conduct big transactions. However, there’s a new technology that might change this perception of the internet in the future.</li><li>Blockchain technology is a way of managing transactions. It makes it possible for people to bypass traditional banking authorities by making all transactions transparent and decentralized so that everyone involved can see what’s happening with the database.</li><li>Blockchain is a system of verification that makes it impossible for hackers to make changes without being noticed. It also does<warningtag>n’t allow old entries to be changed, since no one entity controls the blockchain.</warningtag></li></ul>

Internet and security

“We believe that blockchain technology could be an important tool for protecting and preserving humanity and the rights of every human being, a means of communicating the truth, distributing prosperity, and—as the network rejects the fraudulent transactions—of rejecting those early cancerous cells from a society that can grow into the unthinkable.”

“Creating a complete picture of a company financial health, by looking at periodic financial statements, is like turning a hamburger into a cow”

“Every cultural industry is up for disruption, and the promise is that creators get fully compensated for the value they create.”

“Let the code speak for itself.”

“ I’m a big believer in the ability of blockchain technology to effect fundamental change in the infrastructure of the financial service industry.” Bob Greifeld, CEO of NASDAQ

“Governments that wish to repress the voices of citizens everywhere and have captured technologies like the Internet to silence dissidents and block outside media will find blockchain technology significantly more challenging.”

The first, foundational book on blockchain technology, from the bestselling author of Wikinomics Don Tapscott and blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, now in paperback with a new preface and chapter explaining recent developments in the world of blockchain, including cryptoassets, ICOs, smart contracts, and more. “This book has had an enormous impact on the evolution of blockchain in the world.” —Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corporation In this revelatory book, Don and Alex Tapscott bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and essential book about the technology driving the future of the economy. Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolution­ary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it’s best known as the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital cur­rencies, it also has the potential to go far beyond currency, to record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certifi­cates to insurance claims, land titles, and even votes. As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, blockchain technology will create winners and losers. This book shines a light on where it can lead us in the next decade and beyond.

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Cryptocurrency

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Technology & The Future

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Books

The first, foundational book on blockchain technology, from the bestselling author of Wikinomics Don Tapscott and blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, now in paperback with a new preface and chapter explaining recent developments in the world of blockchain, including cryptoassets, ICOs, smart contracts, and more.   “This book has had an enormous impact on the evolution of blockchain in the world.” —Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corporation In this revelatory book, Don and Alex Tapscott bring us a brilliantly researched, highly readable, and essential book about the technology driving the future of the economy.    Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolution­ary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it’s best known as the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital cur­rencies, it also has the potential to go far beyond currency, to record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certifi­cates to insurance claims, land titles, and even votes.    As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, blockchain technology will create winners and losers. This book shines a light on where it can lead us in the next decade and beyond.

Don Tapscott is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Don Tapscott has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Don Tapscott's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Don Tapscott

Alex Tapscott is the CEO of NextBlock Global a digital asset company. Previously, he worked for seven years in investment banking in New York and Toronto.

Alex Tapscott

Blockchain Revolution

Corporations support ethical trade and green investing. Thought leaders host panels on worldwide justice. Philanthropists flaunt their kindness in “giving back.” Could this whole discussion of making the world turn into a better place be a sham?The influential language of transforming the world is a scam to maintain the status quo. The means that the ideologies they support allow them to maintain their power and the actual denial of that power lets them to remain in charge.

Business elites have redefined social progress to fit their own personal interests

The win-win maxim of the elites enables them to look like they’re improving the world while they are essentially benefitting from inequality.If you occur to be an extremely effective person, you might be accustomed to reasoning in terms of win-win. It’s the easy principle that in all circumstances, there’s a result that’s valuable for every side. The idea became popular from the famous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Win-win might be an excellent maxim for personal effectiveness; however, when elites use it to the bigger world, it gets more difficult.

The win-win maxim of the elites

What do you think the future holds? A lot of prosperous business founders assert that we’re moving to a future where everybody will be an entrepreneur, where technology will indefinitely extend our lives, and where online videos will substitute text communication. These may seem like possible predictions of things to happen.Presenting a specific future scenario as unavoidable is only one of the means that business elites use to act as if they do not have power. Also, they like to act as rebels against the establishment. However, it only conceals the actual power they possess and the manner the<warningtag>y use it to take advantage of those that are truly powerless.</warningtag>

The powerful deny their power

Nowadays, the majority of us obtain our information from famous online sources in bite-size pieces. All thanks to digital media, different types of complicated ideas are now more extensively accessible than ever before.That signifies that it is very easy than ever before to make oneself heard. The issue is, it’s usually not complicated, critical ideas that are conveyed. Instead, there has been a current spread of glib, reassuring messages asserting that things are okay just the way as they are. Previously, we had public intellects asking difficult questions about the manner society functions; <warningtag>now there are the thought leaders.</warningtag>

Elites depend on thought leaders to maintain their power

Consider the challenge of worldwide poverty. Businesses like to promote business answers. For instance, TechnoServe asserts to create wealth by connecting people to markets and information.However, by doing that, they pass over the real roots of poverty, such as unfair labor circumstances and low wages. Concentrating on those would need businesses to examine how they maximize their own profits at the expense of workers. Who wants to do that?

When a business approaches problem-solving dominate, social issues are disregarded

“There is no denying that today’s elite may be among the more socially concerned elites in history. But it is also, by the cold logic of numbers, among the more predatory in history.”

“Profitable companies built in questionable ways and employing reckless means engage in corporate social responsibility, and some rich people make a splash by “giving back”—regardless of the fact that they may have caused serious societal problems as they built their fortunes.”

“How can there be anything wrong with trying to do good? The answer may be: when the good is an accomplice to even greater, if more invisible, harm.”

Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can--except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. They rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; they lavishly reward "thought leaders" who redefine "change" in ways that preserve the status quo; and they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm

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Politics

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Society, Arts & Culture

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite's efforts to "change the world" preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve. An essential read for understanding some of the egregious abuses of power that dominate today’s news. "Impassioned.... Entertaining reading.” —The Washington Post Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can—except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. They rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; they lavishly reward “thought leaders” who redefine “change” in ways that preserve the status quo; and they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm.      Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? His groundbreaking investigation has already forced a great, sorely needed reckoning among the world’s wealthiest and those they hover above, and it points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world—a call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.

Anand Giridharadas

Winners Take All

Key takeaways There are various laws of linguistics; for example, famous words are shorter than less popular words. These laws apply not only to human language but also to animal communication. But the most surprising thing is that these rules appear almost everywhere, from species distribution and size to disease outbreaks, to protein structure.

UNKNOWN LAWS OF LANGUAGE THAT APPLY THROUGHOUT LIFE

For example, shorter words are used in different languages more often than longer ones. Biologists have noticed this, and many have wondered whether these linguistic laws apply to biological phenomena. Indeed, a new review published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution discusses their findings in detail.

Linguists have long known that human speech seems to be governed

The first linguistic rule concerns the frequency of a language's most frequently used words. This is known as Zipf's rank-frequency law and holds that the relative frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its frequency rank. In other words, the most frequently used word will be twice as often as the second most commonly used word, three times as often as the third most frequently used word, and so on. For example, the most common word in English is seven percent of all the words we use. The next most common is about 3.5 percent.

Formula 1: twice the size of the nearest rival 

The second linguistic rule we can apply to life is Zipf's law of abbreviation, which describes the tendency for more commonly used words to become shorter. This applies to hundreds of different and unrelated languages, including sign language. In English, the seven most common words are three letters or less, and there are only two words in the top 100 (people and therefore) that have more than five letters. The words we use most often are short and to the point.

Pattern 2: more minor things are more common

Communication between birds and mammals tends to be short. Indeed, it can be seen in the songs of black-headed tits, the duration of the calls of Formosa macaws, the vocalizations of the indri, the timing of chimpanzees' gestures, and the length of surface behavioral patterns in dolphins. Humans are not the only ones who want their language to be effective.

This is also a law evident throughout nature

Take a sentence such as this one, with all its words, long and short, joined together, punctuated by commas, sunk into each other to reach the final (and breathtaking) finale. It should be noted that although a sentence is long, it is divided into relatively small sentences. This is known as Menzerath's law, in which there is a negative relationship between the size of the whole and the size of the parts. This can be seen not only in sentence construction; the law applies to short phonemes and syllables found in long words.

Part 3: the longer something is, the shorter its composite parts

Although the article focuses mainly on these three laws, it points to others that can still be found (those that are so far under-researched and understudied). For example, Herdan's law (the correlation between the number of unique words and text length) is evident in the proteomes of many organisms, and Zipf's law of meaning frequency (in which more common words have more meanings) is evident in primates. Gestures.

Linguistic laws in biology and beyond 

The sheer scale of application and versatility of these laws is remarkable. The laws discovered in linguistics have applications in ecology, microbiology, epidemiology, demography, and geography.


Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas eBook : Thomson, Jonny: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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Marketing & Sales

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Health

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Communication

<ol><li>Don't make big purchases unless you have 2x its price saved up</li><li>Don't buy anything you can lease</li><li>Don't spend to impress others</li><li>Only spend your passive income</li></ol>

4 'unpopular money rules'

Not spending to save money is not a smart way to go about it. You also need to have some simple rules to make it easier for yourself.

Many people know how to earn money, but few know how to spend it, says self-made millionaire Grant Cardone. He shares the "unpopular" money rules that helped him save enough money to build a thriving real estate empire and buy a house with cash.

Millionaire shares 4 'unpopular money rules' that made him rich: 'Don't buy anything you can lease'

The Worldly Philosophers is your hands-on guide to economics, how the world works overall but especially from a financial point of view, what are the social and economic systems that existed throughout history, and how certain people’s concepts got to shape the world we know today.The Worldly Philosophers is a comprehensive and engaging book that provides readers with a thorough understanding of the development of modern economic philosophy. The book received favorable reviews from the New York Times. And it has received praise from various other publications as well.

The Worldly Philosophers – Book Summary

In a nutshell, it presents the world order from an economical point of view. Everything regarding macroeconomics these days is mathematical, social, political, and overall influenced by various events dating from centuries ago, all the way to our days.The book follows these events and presents the natural evolution of humanity in relation to economics. It also highlights the major political and social winds and concepts that helped shape our world. And traces the roots of today’s socio-economical conditions.

<ul><li>All economists sought to understand one common concept: how society works.</li><li>A market ruled by tradition, coercion, and rules of the past is deemed to crash.</li><li>Adam Smith is considered the father of modern economics due to his invaluable theory presented in 1776.</li></ul>Economics is not complicated. But it’s fun and relevant. Don’t believe me? Let’s explore these three lessons in detail and you’ll see for yourself!

Here are three of the best lessons from the book:

Regardless of the theories they produced, every economist wanted to find out how to organize a society in the best way, economically and socially speaking. The economists’ quest for this holy grail underlies their seemingly disparate approaches and theories. Yet their shared desire has led them to develop numerous similar ideas.We can broadly divide economic theory into two categories: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics focuses on individual markets and how changes in prices, supply and demand affect them.

Lesson 1: Regardless of their theories, every economist wanted to find out the single best way to organize a society.

Macroeconomics focuses on aggregating these individual markets into a single economy that we can measure in terms of total output, total employment, price levels, etc.The economists who have had the greatest impact on our lives tried their best to measure these two economic concepts and find a way to integrate them into a successful formula for our society.

The book looks at the ideas of Karl Marx, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, Thorstein Veblen, Jevons, Malthus, Marshall and John Maynard Keynes. And reaches the idea that all economists sought to understand the same main idea: how humans behave in a society.

History proves once again to be the teller of our present and future. And the best metric to analyze our actions and their consequences today. Actions of the past show how rulers who enforce their visions upon citizens and interfere with the economy and deemed to fall.The 5-year economic plans in the Soviet Union, the forced labor in Egypt, or the enforced traditions and customs in China or India over the economic systems show that states are better left outside the economic machine. People should have freedom of choice in their economic endeavors.

Lesson 2: Efficient markets are driven by profits, freedom of choice and effective institutions.

When states interfere, it should be only to create a legal and efficient environment for these markets to coexist in peace. No forced traditions, labor, or plans will do well in the long run, because people do not work efficiently under such rules.To build efficient markets, states should build the right legal structures and interfere as rarely as possible. Because markets are efficient and regulate themselves. Adam Smith highly popularized this theory. However, it looks true when you look at the highly efficient markets today compared to the ones from the past century.

Many consider Adam Smith as the father of modern economics. That’s because he popularized a highly relevant piece of writing in 1776 titled “The Wealth of Nations”. This paper created a theory that provides a simple answer for how markets are highly efficient. And they regulate themselves through supply and demand.The theory advocates for the Invisible Hand Mechanism, a concept that popularized the idea of a market determined by supply and demand in which states must not interfere. But only regulate what needs to be regulated, legally speaking.

Lesson 3: Adam Smith popularized a famous theory that is as relevant today as it was in 1776.

This market’s equilibrium point is reached at the intersection between the two forces. People set prices themselves, and due to competition, they will lower as much as they need to, or grow accordingly.This theory also states that societies will grow at their own pace. And that they develop in time due to these natural laws of economics. He also popularized the Law of Population. The law states that people will have children at different times. But mostly only during good economic conditions.

The Worldly Philosophers covers the lives and works of many of the most influential economists in history, providing detailed biographical information about each one and explaining what their contributions were. It also provides an overview of how economic thought has developed over time and how it has affected our world. This book would be excellent for anyone who wants to learn more about how modern economics has evolved over time.

The Worldly Philosophers – Book Review

The 30-year-old person who is passionate about economics and the biographies of major influential figures in the economy, the 22-year-old student who wants to study outside their curricula, or the 34-year-old stock market investor who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the field by studying macroeconomics from its fundamentals.

Who would I recommend The Worldly Philosophers to?

“As long as custom and command ruled the world, the problem of riches and poverty hardly struck the earlier philosophers at all, other than to be accepted with a sign or railed at as another sign of man’s inner worthlessness”-Robert L. Heilbroner

The Worldly Philosophers - Book Review (Economics)

The Worldly Philosophers is your hands-on guide to economics: how the world works overall but especially from a financial point of view

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Philosophy

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

The Worldly Philosophers Summary

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."

Technology is deflationary. Our economic systems were not built for a world driven by technology where prices keep falling. They were built for a pre-technology era when labour and capital were inextricably linked, an era that counted on growth and inflation, an era where we made money from scarcity and inefficiency. That era is over.We're currently living in a fast-pace changing world. What works today won't work tomorrow. Technology is moving too fast and it will only move faster from here.Growth is driven by easy credit, which is being created at a pace that is hard to comprehend.

Introduction: The End of Inflation

All around the world we encounter with rising prices, but this rise in prices is artificially driven by an enormous rise in credit and debt.Governments and central banks will do almost anything to stop deflation.Debt combined with deflation is a toxic combination, because borrowers have to pay the same for their interest payments while earning less.<ul><li>Total debt in 2000: $62 T</li><li>World economy in 2000: $33.5 T</li><li>World economy in 2018: $80 T</li><li>Total debt in 2018: $247 T</li></ul>To achieve a $46 T of global growth it has taken approximately $185 T of global debt.

Inflation, Credit & Debt

Prior to the 2008 crash experts expected the world to continue in the manner in which they were accustomed. This didn't change until they were well past the edge of the cliff.It wasn't housing itself that caused the 2008 bubble. If it hadn't been housing, it would've been somewhere else that easy credit was flowing to.The continuing rise of debt that cannot be paid back was at the heart of any crisis. A bubble pops when people wake up and realize that the debt can never be paid off.Then, credit is removed - and because easy credit was the main thing causing the run-up, assets collapse.

2008 Crisis

"The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession." - January 10, 2008

"We are in danger of a broad systemic collapse, and action needs to be taken urgently to head it off. We need the authority to spend several hundred billion." - September 18, 2088

One of the pillars of capitalism is a free-market system. A near-constant flow of innovative entrepreneurs breaking monopolies and then themselves creating new ones.The term "creative destruction" was coined by Austrian American economist Joseph Schumpether (1883-1950). In his vision of capitalism entrepreneurs are the disruptive force which sustains economic growth.E.g. Blockbuster dominated the physical movie distribution, with over 9000 stores over the US. They had the monopoly, but they didn't see digital streaming coming. Then Netflix created and Blockbuster was destroyed.

Creative Destruction

"Creative destruction doesn't happen at a steady rate over time. At certain points in history, there is more opportunity for entrepreneurs to create disruption."

"Through economies of scale, the bigger a company was, the more buying power and leverage it had to squeeze out competitors. In contrast, a network effect exists when the value of a product or service gives more value to each user as the number of users increases."

Our thinking is determined by our cognitive biases, resulting in us accepting information which fits our actual beliefs and refusing those which opposes our beliefs. Let's take a look to two common cognitive biases:<ul><li>Anchoring effect happens when our minds put too much weight on initial information when making decisions.</li><li>Sunk-cost bias happens when you continue to invest time or money into something because of the time or emotion you already put in.</li></ul>Cognitive biases fool us and trick our brain to keep a narrow thinking.

It's Hard to Think Differently

"As we navigate our lives, we normally allow ourselves to be guided by impressions and feelings, and the confidence we have in our intuitive beliefs and preferences is usually justified. But not always. We are often confident, even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect out errors than we are."

"Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

Progress within the technological field is constantly speeding up. This growth can be understood through Sigmoid Function Curve of Technology which works as follows.S curves resemble an S shape where growth is first quite slow, then exponential, and then it slows before reaching another step change, which creates the new S of the exponential rate before slowing again.It is almost incomprehensible to imagine how much technology speeds up and what will happen next.Let's see technologies that will enter mainstream in the near future:<ul><li>Self-driving cars</li><li>VR & AR</li><li>Additive manufacturing & 3D printing</li></ul>

The Technology Boom

Let's take a look to the first and second laws of thermodynamics:<ul><li>First law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed and that the total amount of energy in the universe must remain the same.</li><li>Second law states that energy always moves from higher to lower concentrations,heat dissipates.</li></ul>The actual energy industry is based on an inefficient route which consumes lots of energy and resources until the final energy is obtained.This inefficiency makes energy a more expensive resource than it should be.Fossil fuel plants are still running despite polluting and being in heavy losses.

Energy Nowadays

Solar energy changes everything. With the actual technology the surface area required to generate all of our needed energy is 496,805 square km.The price per watt with solar energy has dropped from $256 in 1954 to 82 cents today.With the creation of a more efficient way of acquiring energy, costs are dramatically reduced and therefore production of any technology becomes cheaper.With a transition to a cleaner energy source like solar energy we also reduce environmental pollution. And not only that, cheap energy will allow us to remove carbon dioxide from our environment efficiently.

Solar Energy

"In from three to eight years, we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being."

Nowadays most of the success in AI is really machine learning or "narrow" artificial intelligence, not general purpose AI. But while it is easy to dismiss narrow AI and believe in our own superiority, AI that can beat humans at different domains has enormous implications. At one point, instead of training AI, we won't be needed.Bayesian method states that you can learn any problem as long as you had a starting probability and enough cycles to update the probabilities.Our Intelligence, as computers and AI is based on error correction and refinement of hypotheses through iterations.

The Future of Intelligence

"True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, it's the refusal to acquire it."

"Power tends to corrupt, and asbolute power corrupts absolutely."

The future will be ruled by those who hold the keys to AI and technology. Within this race for power we distinguish different actors:<ul><li>Public entities such as governments.</li><li>Private corporations such as Google and Huawei.</li></ul>Depending on who holds the power the interests may vary, for some actors privacy is a must and for others it is control.Information and knowledge have been expanding exponentially as we build on past learnings and as we improve our technology. Soon - perhaps already - that rate of growth will be too fast for our own minds to keep pace. [...] Then who will be the masters?

Who Will Be the Masters?

"Watch your thoughts, they become words;watch your words, they become actions;Watch your actions, they become habits;watch you habits, they become character;watch your character, for it becomes your destiny."

"The need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation, much of what human beings do is done in the service of belongingness."

Our need of belongingness is inherent to us, as humans we are constantly categorizing ourselves and others into groups. F.e. nationality, religion, job, personality...Groups don't necessarily need to be formal, we can belong to hundreds of groups, from your friends' group to a nation that you are proud to call home.These differentiatons in our minds are often about being not only different but better in some way. Those groups make us stand out by saying, "I'm like this, those people are like that." "Here is why you and I belong, why we understand each other."

Us Versus Them

In 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a theory that all humans possess a hierarchy of needs from basic need to self-actualization: some needs were more important than others, and needs on one level must be satisfied before the next can be addressed.Understanding needs and desires and then targeting them is at the heart of persuasion. This work by Maslow helped propel marketing and communications in countless industries and brands.Advertising and marketing deliberately play on our desires and biases to guide our thoughts, therefore influencing our decisions.

The Power of Understanding Needs and Desires

"Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamentals standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority."

You and a friend are caught by police for committing a crime together. The time in prison for the crime are ten years. Police hold you in separate cells with no communication possible.They don't have enough evidence to charge you with a more serious crime, but they do for a lesser crime which will have you both spending one year in jail.To convict you or your friend with the more serious crime, the police will need either your or your friend's confession.The police come into your room and tell you the following:

The Prisoner's Dilemma

<ul><li>If you confess and your friend does not, you will go free. You will spend zero years in prison and your friend willl get the full ten years.</li><li>If you both confess, you will each get five years in prison</li></ul>You must assume that they are about to give your friend the same offer or already have. What should you do?Prisoner's dilemma is one of the most famous examples in game theory. It is an example of a non-zero-sum game, where the actions of each player could make their combined situation better without taking from each other.

Despite being just a hypothetical situation, prisoner's dilemma reflects in an accurate how we tend to behave. Oftentimes the decisions that are best for us are at odds with each other.We can see some examples of this:<ul><li>Drugs or doping in sports: if no one uses them those who best train are awarded, if any athlete cheats he can get caught and exploit the fair results.</li><li>Military spending: if no country had an army that'd mean no war, but if just one country had an army it could rule the world.</li></ul>

A World of Self-interest 

"Now consider all the things technology is, and will soon be, making abundant. Things that are incredibly valuable but because of abundance fall in price precipitously.In a world where technology is concurrently driving deflation and abundance, maybe eventually, one of the forcing functions that makes cooperation more likely to stick is the very fact that there will not be a large economic incentive to "cheat" or "betray" - abundance minimizes the payoff.Or maybe we should attempt to create an economic system that works that way."

"Every company that was designed to have success in the twentieth century is designed to fail in the twenty-first century."

According to Ray Dalio there are only four levers governments can pull to escape debt crisis:<ul><li>Austerity - spending less</li><li>Debt defaults/restructuring</li><li>The central bank printing money or other guarantees</li><li>Wealth transfer - much higher taxes for the rich</li></ul>Because of deflation, austerity would create a vicious feedback cycle and a collapse in asset prices, combined with lower employment that'd result in debt defaults or restructuring. Because of that, lever 1 and lever 2 are inextricably linked.Both levers are extremely painful for society to bear in the short term, hence why dialogue on them is avoided.

How to Escape Debt Crises?

In this scenario we have continued low or negative interest rate environment, central bank printing, modern monetary theory, or other guarantees to keep the party going.The greatest irony of this camp is that it has the highest belief in a free-market economy and capitalism but at the same time doesn't realize that free-market capitalism is not what is happening today.In the short term, this approach can be successful because people feel richer, until the bill is due.Soner than later we'll realize that the only thing driving our economies is the explosion of debt.

Printing Money & Other Guarantees

This strategy has only one endgame:<ol><li>Higher inequality.</li><li>People losing hope in the system due to not being able to mke ends meet.</li><li>More polarization.</li><li>A rise of leaders that use the polarization to create "us versus them" narratives to consolidate power.</li><li>Commonplace revolution and wars.</li></ol>

This line of thinking in politics is the liberal/socialist/communist camp. It goes by the principle that the system should be fair for the disadvantaged, so we must tax the wealthy more to pay for the services to the poor.One of the more prominent proposals in this camp is universal basic income. The idea is simple in premise: raise taxes on the wealthy to give a minimum basic income, whether people work or not, topping people up if they work to a maximum amount but also not requiring them to work for their wage.

Higher taxes on the wealthy, guaranteed basic income

Determining the right amount of basic income differentiated for needs becomes difficult to reasonably achieve.The most important problem with the solution is simply this: it does not deal with the root cause. Deflation is being caused by technology and, because of that, it will ride the same exponential wave technology does. That means that the rate of deflation (without printing more money) will only accelerate from here.The abundance that technology provides us doesn't require net new jobs around the world. It obliterates the work and the jobs we already have.

Since global debt is already so high and expanding quickly, a reset of debt is needed in any truly viable solution.Controlling the value of money can lead to abuse of power - especially if the currency is underlying other currencies.A system that is controlled by one nation and is the backbone of all other currencies might work for a time, until the country's domestic issues force it to unilaterally deliver economic benefit to the nation in control of the currency while hurting all others.Example of this is when the US in 1971, unilaterally terminated the conversion of the US dollar to gold.

Who Controls the Money?

Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) is an attempt at a solution. The promise of Bitcoin was to create a system that was decentralized in nature, unable to be manipulated by anyone - including governments. With Bitcoin limited supply to twenty-one million Bitcoins tries to fix unlimited printing money problem.It creates a peer-to-peer ledger without any central control: the blockchain.As an open, distributed ledger, it offers security and trust by verifying transactions with consensus instead of through a central authority.

Bitcoin as Solution

Occam's razor states: a simpler solution is more likely to be correct than a complex one.What if, instead of trying to stop deflation at all costs, we embrace it? As technology spreads, deflation happens at the rate it should. Deflation becomes something celebrated because it means that we are getting more for less. We allow ourselves to accept abundance.As technology removes jobs and fewer overall jobs are needed, prices will keep falling, allowing those who lose jobs a way to share in the benefit of technology abundance without massive transfers of wealth.

The Simple Solution

If technology-driven price declines continue to the point of something becoming free, we let that happen too. People will no longer have to be on an endless treadmill to pay for things that are constantly rising in price.Prices of all things would fall, yes, but those creating value would be paid for their value creation - at a rate that matched the new realities of supply and demand and our digital world. And those who lose out in our societies would be less at risk.Central banks and governments won't let this happen, but who knows if Bitcoin will surpass their power with a network effect...

"A currency only holds value because of the deemed trust we have in it. Beyond that, it is just a piece of paper with faces and numbers on it."

"Asking big questions is sometimes more powerful than the solution itself because it inspires knowledge of the world to solve it and, as such, brings diverse ways of solving problems."

In this brilliant book, Jeff Booth explains his vision of the near future with the influence of technology on it.

We live in an extraordinary time. In a world that moves faster than we can imagine, we cannot afford to stand still. In this extraordinary contrarian book Jeff Booth details the technological and economic realities shaping our present and our future, and the choices we face as we go forward-a potentially alarming, but deeply hopeful situation.

"Your world view will transform instantly" - SALIM ISMAIL, Bestselling Author of Exponential Organizations We live in an extraordinary time. Technological advances are happening at a rate faster than our ability to understand them, and in a world that moves faster than we can imagine, we cannot afford to stand still. These advances bring efficiency and abundance--and they are profoundly deflationary. Our economic systems were built for a pre-technology era when labour and capital were inextricably linked, an era that counted on growth and inflation, an era where we made money from inefficiency. That era is over, but we keep on pretending that those economic systems still work. The only thing driving growth in the world today is easy credit, which is being created at a pace that is hard to comprehend--and with it, debt that we will never be able to pay back. As we try to artificially drive an economic system built for the past, we are creating more than just economic trouble. On our current path, our world will become profoundly more polarized and unsafe. We need to build a new framework for our local and global economies, and soon; we need to accept deflation and embrace the abundance it can bring. Otherwise, the same technology that has the power to bring abundance to us and our world will instead destroy it. In this extraordinary contrarian book, Jeff Booth, a leading mind and CEO in e-commerce and technology for 20 years, details the technological and economic realities shaping our present and our future, and the choices we face as we go forward--a potentially alarming, but deeply hopeful situation.

Jeff Booth

The Price of Tomorrow

<ol><li>Hold stocks for the long term</li><li>Be choosy about where to invest - by understanding the business</li><li>Ask yourself"Is the business going to keep producing more money all the time?"</li><li>Extreme diversification is the right approach if you do not have enough time to sort through the businesses. The solution is low-cost index tracker funds</li><li>If you have time to  put in the effort, try to find about 6 wonderful businesses.</li></ol>

How to use Buffet's 5 tips to build Wealth

This article provides two key tracks about investment in terms of time available. 

If I'd learnt about these five Warren Buffett tips at the age of 30, I'd likely be a lot richer now... and here's why.

With no savings at 30, I'd use Warren Buffett's 5 tips to build wealth

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Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas eBook : Thomson, Jonny: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Millionaire shares 4 'unpopular money rules' that made him rich: 'Don't buy anything you can lease'

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With no savings at 30, I'd use Warren Buffett's 5 tips to build wealth

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