It Takes Money to Change the World
Without money, you cannot save the rain forests in Brasil. You may protest and try to prevent illegal foresting, or start a blog and write about how severe the unlawful deforestation is. Now imagine what you could achieve with 100 million dollars in your bank account. Your chances to save the Brasilian rainforests are higher, much higher.
What I want to address with this post is the ongoing badmouthing of money. Do you want to get rich? Dare you! Every day I see people in a personal crisis, not knowing what to do with their life. Young people want to have an impact on the world. They want to change the world for the better. Whether it is to fight corruption, animal abuse, or climate change.
I too want to have a tremendous impact on the world. But how can one have an impact on the world? I would like to propose to earn money first. Is it wrong if you make a few millions first before you change the world? No! I think getting freaking rich is going to improve the odds of changing the world considerably.
Why not spent 3 to 5 years working super hard to build a successful business and then sell it for 50 million dollars? With the money you’ve earned, you can impact the world much more significant than with 1,000 dollars you have in your bank account right now. With 50 million you can quickly start and fund your own business which will clean the entire ocean of rubbish.
I adopted this thinking by observing Elon Musk. Elon Musk started his first business Zip2, and sold it four years later and received 22 million for his shares. He used this money to start X.com which then became PayPal. When PayPal went public, Musk received 165 million dollars from the IPO. With 165 million on his bank account, he started SpaceX with his aim to fly to Mars. With 165 million on his bank account, Elon Musk joined Tesla as a Series A investor and later CEO and product architect. The money he earned by starting two successful technology companies enabled him to do good things for the world. It would have been impossible for Elon Musk to begin with a rocket company as his first startup with $10 in his wallet.
With this post, I merely want to raise awareness that money can be a critical tool to do good things for the world. Maybe earn millions first before you can accomplish your goals to improve the world.
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash
