Currencies that can’t be minted

Abundance that can’t be traded... yet

I get asked all that time, “What do you want to do after school?”.

Would I be lying if I said that it wasn’t about the money when I’m taking a software job?

I want to be rich, but I believe there are currencies that can’t be minted.

Influence

You can spend a year preparing and then climbing Mt. Everest. It might seem to cost you dollars. World class equipment costs a lot of money when you don’t want to die. What you gain is influence.

Search for stories of people who have accomplished great things or who have powerful ideas. There is a good chance they can create wealth with their story with public speaking or other medium of sharing ideas.

It doesn’t have to be some amazing physical feat. Michelle Obama gives us an aura of powerful grace and insight. She wrote a book about what she has learned. She didn’t get paid to live her life with meaning. She is abundant in influence.

Becoming

The same concept applies to the YouTuber who uses his subscriber number to get a free stay at the suite in a hotel in return for a video review.

In addition, anytime we see Eleven eat Eggo waffles in Stranger Things, we want to eat Eggo waffles. Maybe it can give us physic powers like what she has.

Culture

As my family and I sit around the table this Christmas and enjoy our roast beef, we all comment on the tablecloth my mom lays out only for Christmas dinner.

That tablecloth barely has any useful functions. We already had a tablecloth we use every other day of the year. It might cost $10, but my family would be willing to pay $40 for it. It helps us celebrate our culture.

Freedom

I just took an introduction to macroeconomics class as a graduation requirement. It’s nice taking a break from engineering problem sets.

The first lesson we learned in class was about Opportunity Costs.

Opportunity Cost: The value of the next best alternative forgone.

While we learned it in terms of loosing the ability to buy an additional coconut instead of an additional chicken, I like to think our flexibility allows us to be more elastic when opportunities come our way. It can be jobs, investment opportunities, or people to meet.

Another lesson we learn is what price elasticity is. It is how sensitive agents are to price changes. We learn that when taxes or subsidies are applied to either the buyer or seller, it is the more elastic agent that pays less of the tax or gets more of the subsidy.

Tax on the more elastic seller

From the picture above, the seller is the more elastic agent. When the price changes, the quantity they supply doesn’t change as much compared to how the price affects how much the buyer demands.

When a tax is applied to the seller, you can see

• red + blue = tax payed to government
• red = what the seller has to pay
• blue = what the buyer has to pay.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a subsidy for the seller or if the tax was on the buyer, the more elastic (freedom) agent will benefit from changes in supply and demand.

The scholarships I received in college allowed me to focus on other things like teaching myself computer science and writing a book. Here is that book.

Get Paid $500 an Hour to Go to College: The Gritty Scholarship Guide Everyone Needs to Read!

Other kinds of freedom can be bought as well. Women used to sleep with men for money and then buy indulgences from the Catholic church so they could achieve salvation.

Here are other currencies that can’t be minted

1. Health: Treating your body and mind right so you don’t pay for it later.
2. Belonging/Relationships: We pay not to feel lonely.
3. Skills: The emergent effect of the culmination of skills you have is not worth what you paid to get them.
4. Social Network: Connecting need with abundance generates wealth from nothing (Uber, Airbnb, people).
5. Time: Time is money.

All of these things are worth money and some businesses offer you them as a service. They can be paid for, but when they don’t actually cost anything, it is better to go and create this wealth for yourself.

Instead of investing $1000 dollars into the stock market, pay yourself $1000 to go become abundant in these currencies that can’t be minted.

So what do I want to do after school?

I want abundance, but abundance that doesn’t show up as a number in my bank account

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +404,714 people.

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