What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about life essentials? I mean like living space, food, and medical care. If you had free room and board, got free food of your choice, and didn’t have to fear the reaper everytime you got a little cough, would you still be doing the thing that you’re doing right now?
How would your life change without those essential expenses?
I’ll have mine in the comments.
I’d still have a job, but one that I was my own boss at, making much less money but having freedom and independence to spend my entire day doing what I wanted.
interesting question. here’s an alternative answer for it:
i have my “life essentials”, essentially, taken care of. in 2003, i had a brain injury, and, now, i live, mostly, on disability and my wife’s ability to bring in money. technically, i’m not even allowed to have a job, because of the fact that i’m on disability. i always worry that something will happen (#drumpf is high on the list) that will make it so that i have to have a job again, but, so far, that hasn’t happened.
what i do, is this: i am an artist and musician, and play in three different bands. i am a small business owner, an agarbathiwala, or “incense seller”. i provide host services for a number of local arts and music organisations, primarily because most of the people don’t know what an IP address is, and (before my injury) i worked with the back end of email installations, and as a web designer.
if i, truly, “didn’t have to worry” about whether or not my “life essentials” would be taken care of, there’s a good chance that i would not provide host services any longer, and focus more of my attention on art, music, and incense, because that is what i truly enjoy doing.
I’d still have to work the rest of my life to pay off my debt. They say money talks, but the only thing it ever said to me was goodbye.
Honestly, I would probably just play music with friends everyday. It never gets old and that’s when I am at my happiest/best self.
I’d start a foundation.
Maybe like Susan Unterberg did – over 20 years she provided grants anonymously to up and coming female artists so they could focus on their art instead of waiting tables.
www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/arts/design/susan-unterberg-artist-grant.html
Or like Bill and Melinda Gates, who with Warren Buffet took on the Millenium Development Goals (RIP Kofi Annan) and has vaccinated, educated, and provided basic nutrition to kids in the 4th world – saving about 122M lives.
www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/14/bill-gates-philanthropy-warren-buffett-vaccines-infant-mortality
That way, I can spend my days being a dirty old man trolling seedy bars while actually doing some good for the world.
heads up, there’s only three worlds when using that phrase, it was intended to be USA vs Russia, and the rest of the world was the third world.
I call your three worlds and raise you four:
China and India don’t belong in the same category as Liberia or the Congo.
Bill Gates (via Hans Gosling) on “Why I want to stop talking about the “developing” world” breaks the 4 levels down:
One billion people live on level 1. This is what we think of as extreme poverty. If you’re on level 1, you survive on less than $2 a day and get around by walking barefoot. Your food is cooked over an open fire, and you spend most of your day traveling to fetch water. At night, you and your children sleep on a dirt floor.
Three billion people live on level 2, between $2 and $8 a day. Level 2 means that you can buy shoes and maybe a bike, so it doesn’t take so long to get water. Your kids go to school instead of working all day. Dinner is made over a gas stove, and your family sleeps on mattresses instead of the floor.
Two billion people live on level 3, between $8 and $32 a day. You have running water and a fridge in your home. You can also afford a motorbike to make getting around easier. Some of your kids start (and even finish) high school.
One billion people live on level 4. If you spend more than $32 a day, you’re on level 4. You have at least a high school education and can probably afford to buy a car and take a vacation once in a while.
www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness?WT.mc_id=04_03_2018_10_Factfulness_BG-media_&WT.tsrc=BGmedia
that’s great and all but has nothing to do with the three world system of influence in which the US influences other nations, the previous USSR influenced nations, and all the other countries were under the influence of one of the two major world views. it’s still the case too.
I get what you’re saying though, which is an economics level, but that’s not what the phrase is referring to, it’s referring to political influence, not economic strength.