Our dear friend Starkerz brought up goofy-voiced Andrew Tate on X and his ridiculous slogan "you just need to get rich", as if it were just that easy for everybody.
image source
Just buy buildings bro... Just ask your parents for $500,000, you don't need much to start Hustlers University bro.. just get rich.
Or worse, as if anybody would be willing to do whatever it takes to get rich.
If you were presented with the offer of $50,000 per child to kill children. Would you do it?
It's an extreme example and maybe a few would.
Some people are ready to risk it all, I'm aware of that. A handfull of Somali pirates will ride skiffs armed with handguns and grappling hooks against cargo ships who are potentially strapped to the gills in hopes of a payday.
Most of us, however, wouldn't even contemplate the thought. Which doesn't mean we haven't looked at alternative ways of creating wealth. Some of use here have looked beyond the traditional economic systems that we live in and have turned to crypto to find ways of creating value. Hive is one such economic system that allows ANYBODY to create value for others by sharing knowledge, skills or hard work. In return, these Hiveans will receive value in the form of $HIVE tokens, $HBD stable coins or a number of layer 2 tokens built on Hive Engine. They can then take these earnings and power up (in other words stake those tokens in a savings account) to have more influence within the ecosystem and generate passive income, or they could also spend these currencies on goods or sell them for fiat or other currencies.
Here is the central question in my post though: Is the HIVE system just a different system creating inequality outside the traditional economic system? Or is it a system that gives hope to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to earn anything or perhaps only a fraction in a traditional market?
For starters, I see the HIVE blockchain as a level playing field, a place where everybody is able to build wealth with more or less the same opportunities. Anybody can come here and add value to the ecosystem by documenting how they educated a group of people about the benefits of web3 or maybe how they bought school supplies for the local school.
If you are a developer or determined enough to learn programming, you can build tools for other users such as Decentralized exchanges like Leo Dex or payments solutions like V4V.app, and if you're comfortable in front of the camera, heck, you can make tutorials on how to use these tools.
These are just a few of the videos I've made showing folks how to pay a Lightning invoice with Hive Keychain + v4Vapp:
https://peakd.com/hive-151961/@alex-rourke/dlqfdnft
https://peakd.com/hive-151961/@alex-rourke/dbzxyzkg
https://peakd.com/hive-151961/@alex-rourke/wbqphjpp
https://peakd.com/hive-151961/@alex-rourke/nsxqczdc
https://peakd.com/hive-151961/@alex-rourke/xhnhspef
If you're a musician or artist, you can make non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and sell them to your fans on one of several marketplaces built on HIVE. Take a look at this example. This is an album I produced for Hivean band @wrongband. We put together an in-studio recording of the band jamming, and a piece of artwork created for the album and we released it as an NFT.
All 10 copies were sold.
You can check out this piece on @nftshowroom here.
I also see that some folks are taking whatever HIVE they earned on a blog post to Binance and selling it off for pennies while whales who know the price of HIVE is low are picking it up at a discount to build future wealth.
So my question is: do economic systems naturally have the tendency to form small elite groups? Are web3 economic systems just different tools for rich people to make more riches?
Are parallel economies giving regular folks like me the opportunity to build tech businesses and strengthening the middle class?
I don't have the answer folks. I'm just asking questions and would love to read your thoughts in the comments.
Images in this post were created with Mid Journey and edited in Canva unless sources were provided.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
I think that all economic systems will eventually lead to poor and rich people. I guess it has to do with our mindset. When talking about Hive, you're definitely right that new people at first think: WOOW, I can easily make some money here. Than the reality check is there and after their introduction post, they only get some very small upvotes.
Yes, free money doesn't exist. We all have to work for it. Once someone is at above mentioned point, they can choose to sell tgeir small gains for something else or keep building. It's that choice that will make the difference between poor and rich people. Rich people will look into ways to grow their stack while poor people will just spend it (or have to spend it, I get it that if you have only $1, you rather buy food than invest it)
Great article!
Great comment! Yes, I forgot to mention the initial post situation. Why do so many people quit after their first post? This is beyond my comprehension. They have the opportunity to create a new stream of income which is impossible to confiscate and they can use it in a parallel economy. But then again, why do so many people fail to quit smoking, quit on their first week at the gym and drop out of college?
In regards to the quitting after their first post:
I think most people tend to write a second, third,... post, BUT, rather fast they discover that after their introduction, 'the real game' begins...
This leads us again to those putting time and/or effort and/or money in or these who don't.
About your second part, MOTIVATION!
In my opinion, it has a lot to do with motivation. If you're truly intrinsically motivated, nearly everything will work out!
I have to state the obvious that if one is rich, and they enter and invest in Web3/Hive, they will usually earn more than those who started smaller. The rich's curation will be higher, they will get more return in the HBD savings, and if they play their votes right, they can get a faster path to higher post curation. But, I do think that Web3/Hive offers regular people a better chance at additional income, with the possibility of making their lives better if it goes way up. I started from nothing in Hive, and I just slowly built my account. I'm nowhere near the whales, but I trust the process and am continuously working on it. Hive has been the biggest winner among my crypto investments, and I hope others take the time and effort to work on their accounts as well.
Love to read a success story. You're right! Hive gives regular folks like you and me huge opportunities. I believe we have the possibility of building a larger middle class together. I also see folks at the very bottom staying at the very bottom. Why? If you make $1 on a post, you could save $0.10 and power it up. You could track your statistics and see what kind of content gets better engagement and focus on creating more of that type of content.
Yeah. I guess, a lot of people want the get rich quick route in crypto and don't want to make the effort. Unfortunately, not all of us can make it big like that.
I think so, yes, these tools are incredibly important to use, so that we have a chance of creating a middle class at least, and the only way is distribution of value for value created from a neutral base layer that cannot discriminate.
I absolutely agree. These tools are incredibly important to use and are definitely giving folks around here the opportunity for social mobility and move into the middle class. I'll be achieving Orca status on Hive in the near future and along with other Orcas and dolphins I believe we will be able to distribute value and participate in governance in a way that balances out the overwhelming voting power of large stakeholders (on Hive, at least).
I'd love to see if something like the Gini index could be calculated for something like the Hive ecosystem:
sharing is caring
Thanks fren. Indeed, sharing is caring.
#hive #posh
Thank you for sharing this.
Welcome
It’s crazy how some people just come up online to say that you just have to find a way to get rich, lol. Unfortunately, not everyone has the resources.
Also, talking about Hive, people can easily create wealth here especially for those who have spent a reasonable number of years here…
People like Tate are beyond me. Fortunately, I've found a better way of spending my time and that's finding different ways of showing people how I use web3 freedom tools to break free from banks, governments and corporations.