For five years, economist Bob Murphy and I hosted a podcast called Contra Krugman, where we refuted the New York Times columns of civilization-destroying economist Paul Krugman.
People would send us quotations from Krugman and urge us to smash them on the program.
But of all those quotations, none beats this one:
“By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
We laugh at that, and rightly so.
But the fact is, a lot of people shouldn’t laugh. They live as if Krugman were right, since the Internet has had little to no impact on how they participate in the economy.
Thanks to the Internet, I can start a low-cost to no-cost business overnight, and use free resources to build a customer base – even if I have no products of my own. In fact, it’s even easier without your own products. Promote someone else’s and earn commissions – anywhere from 50 to 90 percent.
Yet when most people need extra money, they deliver pizza.
Now:
There is nothing wrong with delivering pizza. It is entirely honorable. And for infusions of small amounts of short-term cash, it’s up there with driving for Uber: it’s great and maybe unbeatable.
But you’re still trading time for money. No matter how many pizzas you deliver, there’s a ceiling on how much you can generate.
For the long haul, you are looking for two things in your side hustle or new business:
(1) It shouldn’t involve trading time for money, because that involves limits on what’s possible (you have only one physical body and only 24 hours in a day);
(2) It must be unshutdownable.
How to build such a thing is exactly what we discussed last night.
You should watch.
Especially because 48 hours from now it comes down:
Tom Woods