Back from Peru

[Jawo]

Just got back from Peru...and got some got amazing pictures! Looks like the GPS tracker worked rather well too!

Will post the pictures as soon as I sort through all of them!

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

OMG I wanna go abroad so bad

I swear... 4 years in the corporate world after graduation, and then I'll probably just quit my job, splurge on the best camera at the time, grab me a plane ticket to somewhere, and go.

 

[Jawo]

Ha! That sounds like what Puffff did! I like what I do and my boss, but office politics drive me crazy. I'm usually planning several trips at once to keep myself sane!

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
OMG I wanna go abroad so bad

I swear... 4 years in the corporate world after graduation, and then I'll probably just quit my job, splurge on the best camera at the time, grab me a plane ticket to somewhere, and go.

You need this book.

 

[punchkin]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
OMG I wanna go abroad so bad

I swear... 4 years in the corporate world after graduation, and then I'll probably just quit my job, splurge on the best camera at the time, grab me a plane ticket to somewhere, and go.

You need this book.

I'll pass. The first review says it all:

Originally written by: D. Rozell
Reading this book is not a total waste of time and money, but pretty close. If you must, I recommend getting this one from the local library to at least eliminate the financial loss.

To be fair, the first 100 pages is a readable autobiographical reminder of an often preached but rarely practiced warning. Life is short. Do not spend every day in a job you hate to buy things you do not need. The author recommends reading Walden. Thoreau, the classic American minimalist, covered all the same material far more eloquently 150 years ago. So why not read Thoreau instead? Good question.

The rest of the book is essentially a money making plan for white collar workers who hate their jobs. If Mr. Ferriss had restricted this book to a discussion of how to eliminate unproductive efforts from the workplace and shorten the workweek for everyone, he could have written a much briefer and significant book. Instead, he starts with the premise that regular jobs are bad and instead you should start an online company that sells anything that will make money and then outsource every function so that you, as the owner, will not have to do anything.

I have two major concerns at this point:

1. If you are as smart and well-prepared as Mr. Ferris, there is money to be made using his strategy. But the same could be said for the stock market, real estate, or various other methods by which many people lose their shirts.

2. If everyone outsources their work, who is left to do the work? If all the farmers, doctors, and garbage collectors followed the advice in this book, eventually, we would all be starving, sick, and sitting in our own waste. The jet-set lifestyle enjoyed by the author only works because others are actually willing to work. Until robots can run the world, the ethical implication is that it is OK for some people to work, just not Mr. Ferriss or his readers.

Finally, throughout the book Mr. Ferris keeps referring to the New Rich. Despite all his attempts at creating a new paradigm, it appears that the only difference between the New Rich and the Old Rich is that the old rich are capitalists that actually produce things that society needs, such as railroads and software, while the new rich sell things like unregulated nutritional supplements.