The Millionaire Lifestyle!
'How do we turn 20k a year into 1 Million a year in utility!?'
Collaborative Wealth
A main function of money is simply a medium of exchange to access resources or services. When we look at millionaires they have seemingly endless access to life's needs and luxuries; this is a lifestyle many strive for. Rather than striving for it, why don't we just live it?
No, I'm not talking about credit card rock stars here!
Imagine 50 people making a 'poverty level' 40k/year. Now imagine if they pooled together 20k of their income, together they would be millionaires!
Does it sound like I'm playing word games?
Use Case
Let us imagine you are a millionaire. As a millionaire, you would like to purchase a professional blender! That professional blender turns out to be $500 and the abundance felt by being so wealthy would make such a purchase simple. How do we access that feeling of abundance without making a million dollars?
Well, let's consider the use and access to this blender. You may use it for only a few minutes a time a couple of times a day... which means that a $500 professional blender is going unused the vast majority of the day. That same blender, however, could be communally bought and used. In this case, instead of paying $500 for access to this blender, you could contribute $10 with 50 other people who would all have access to that blender. Spending that $10 would give you the same feeling of abundance as being the millionaire spending $500! That means, you have now only spent $10 but you got access to $500 worth of material, making you $500 in utility more wealthy! This applies to everything with a low use rate! Think of swimming pools, saunas, VR & gaming systems, books, yard equipment, hiking gear, extreme sports, etc.
I wager the majority of things you own, you hardly use! These are things that we could pool together so we don't all have to work so long to have access to the same utility!
Is it possible for you to see now how you could spend 20k a year but, get access to $1,000,000 more each year?
Sounds like fascism, I'm out! - Someone
Whoa, why'd you have to go there?! This system I'm proposing is entirely voluntary and participatory! If you don't want to share your blender? No worries, you have the freedom to buy your own!
Not of fan of collaborating with that much wealth, no worries...
Material Library
Imagine a location in your neighborhood where you and your neighbors have collaboratively bought items that you can loan out!
This same theory follows not just for a blender, but for the vast majority of things we use and need access to today. Consider the endless expanse of storage containers'in the 'developed world' where people buy things they hardly use, just to spend more money storing them! A shared resource doesn't have to be with everything, certainly not with the items we use regularly or the items we hold near and dear! Just the items the members of the material library have decided to collaboratively own.
Use Case
You're planning on going on a hike this weekend. You know in advance what things you would need but you didn't care/couldn't afford to purchase them yourself. So, you head over to the community library to see what you could use for your trip. You look at the rental log where people book items in advance and notice there is a camera (with tripod), a tent, a hiking bag, hiking mattress, camp stove, and flashlights all available for use (all items seldom used by individual owners). Since these items were communally purchased they are all of the highest quality as well. Now instead of having to purchase the several thousand dollars worth of gear this would have cost you or going to rent low-quality gear from a rental shop, you get to enjoy the use of the highest quality equipment with having only contributed a fraction of the cost!
Best Part Is...
If we're sharing some items, naturally they're going to be used more (as they were intended). With a larger pool of resources, we will be able to buy more durable items, which are inevitable of higher quality.
Meaning, another bonus will be access to higher quality items than we would have had if we made that purchase individually. We could even go out of our way to purchase from companies and organizations that have strong environmental values and ethics, contributing the wealth to more people working to make their change in the world!
Just to be clear...
Think about it, less waste and more wealth! It's good for you and the planet too ;) (MM)
Rieki