When I started on Hive, I was in a pretty bad financial position and while the immediate circumstances were not my fault, my (in)ability to deal with them was. It wasn't that I had been completely complacent in my preparation for life either, it is just that I had underestimated how much I would need and didn't factor anywhere close to the worst case financial scenarios and rather - assumed that everything was going to be pretty okay instead.
There is a good reason I tend to look a lot longer now and am far more "pessimistic" about the future, as in my experience, it generally is better to prepare more for the worst than the best, and my optimistic nature doesn't lend its weight to doing that well. So, I am far more cautious in my appraisals, but ironically, this has also made me much more risk-seeking in my approach.
I believe that this is because that whilst in the past I felt I was "playing it safe" by not risking to invest, what I was actually doing was taking the riskiest path of investing and generating nothing on what I was earning. So, I ended up living hand-to-mouth with the belief that things will improve, but not actually taking significant steps toward actually having an improved outcome.
It is strange to look back on life at that time as I think that I was "happier" in moments but in general, faced far more stress, worrying about much smaller amounts and where to find them. This doesn't mean that I have "made it" in any way, but over the last five years I have adjusted the way I look at the future and affected real change in the way I prepare for it now. This means that even though I do not use my crypto holdings to live my life, I have been able to change my economic outcomes with what I have.
This in a large part is by recognizing that the work I was doing to make ends meet was not going to be enough to ever be much more than that. Saving more would of course help, but there are only so many things that can be cut, so the only real way forward was to increase earnings. This meant getting a second job to provide additional income and it was this that allowed me to extend my inflows so that I could invest a little more and most importantly, not use any portfolio value to live my life.
So, while now things are looking okay, a great deal of my financial future lays in a lot of uncertainty and volatility of the cryptosphere, which I don't mind as I am quite bullish, but I also have to remember "the worst case scenarios" of what if it all collapses.
The best scenario is easy of course as you know, the crypto markets go 20x and never drops lower than that again and I am able to live as a wealthy person, taking a multitude of income streams from all kinds of digital assets - but, is that likely?
Yes
Well, there is likely and there is "likely" and it is the latter in my belief system that is so bullish on the future of crypto. However, I have thought of many best case scenarios in my past experiences that haven't come to fruition, so what if this is the same? I think this is a fear that most people have in crypto, as the market fluctuations happen and things go up fast and then drop back and sideways for a long time - Is it dead?
So what if it fails?
Have you thought about what you will do?
So many people I have talked to on Hive have used the line of "I need HIVE earnings to live" but I wonder then both what they were doing before Hive and what they would do after Hive if it happened to fail. These earnings are definitely not guaranteed and relying on votes for income is a fickle business, as it will eventually shift, no matter what you produce, because people's tastes change or, something shinier takes their attention.
If a person has to live off Hive and that means they aren't investing into their own financial wellbeing if Hive doesn't provide, I believe they are in for a world of hurt eventually. If people have learned anything in their time here, I think it should include that taking responsibility and ownership over oneself is vital, which means not relying on the rewards as a stable source of income.
I want to live with, not off Hive
Rewards are rewards not a salary after all, and because they are provided by many individuals based on stake, they are always going to be unreliable. There are no contracts here to say a person should get anything at all and even if the votes come on a post, they are in "negotiation" until that post pays out. Actually, the HIVE and HBD on rewards doesn't really exist until that payout time, it is just an "earmark" for the potential to get it. At payout however, it comes out of the pool and gets placed into a wallet to become owned by an account - whether it is from creation or curation.
I have heard people say that for instance, a downvote is like "taking money out of someone's wallet" - it is not. However, the HIVE rewards pool is very much like a shared wallet where people who have stake are in a constant discussion about what to spend it on. with the people with the most stake, having the option to spend the largest proportion of the pool. But, a massive amount of value is being distributed very widely, as regardless of the whale votes, all people have a stake-based share to allocate here or there and can spread their votes out.
What you will find though, is the people who complain the most about downvotes are also the ones who have been complaining the most about not getting upvotes and, selling the most of the Hive they get. Funny eh? They complain about not getting support, but don't support anyone themselves. You will also find that the people who consistently get support, are often those who do support others and projects in the ecosystem. This is not a bright line however, there is plenty of blur in play.
Blur is opportunity
But, Hive aside, most people here also have fingers in other pies of various shapes, sizes and flavors - but I wonder what happens to most people if the entire crypto scene failed and went to zero overnight. What would people do to survive?
I know for me, it would suck because I have invested into this industry with the intention of being able to use it as my main source of investment return in the future, but my day to day life is supported entirely by my IRL activity. So "nothing changes" in the present, but nearly my entire economic future preparations are wiped clean and I will have to start from scratch. Again.
I don't want to start from scratch
How many times in our lives can we start from scratch before we learn to build foundations for ourselves so we don't have to ever start from scratch? It seems many. Now, I am not predicting the failure of crypto and actually see it as a relatively safe bet on the future of the economy and where value will be derived, but I am definitely "narrowly invested" as far as the foundation of my portfolio is concerned.
but, what else are we meant to do when the economy we are "meant to be investing into" has headlines like this:
This is a global issue and is entirely due to the mismanagement of the economy and the prevalence of centralized greed in the system, of which I have almost no staked say in at all. This means that other than my ability or inability to consume, I am a passenger of the global economy, not an agent within it. Why would I even consider trying to build ownership for myself in a system that is designed to crush me to become a renter?
The apocalypse isn't the collapse of the economy as we know it, it is its collapse without having an alternative economy to take its place. As I see it, if "crypto fails" we are screwed in ways that are going to turn the world as we know it into a global warzone, with the average people crushed between the centralized powers as they grapple for control - like we have been so many times before in the past.
For the first time though, we get the opportunity to do differently and support a change in the processes that is aimed at improving the world for us, by building an economy that doesn't encourage economic crush and subsequent violence. By stepping outside of the centralized economy and building foundations and structures to house a new type of system that allows for the stake of the people to have a voice instead, *we mitigate the potential damage that those currently in control can do, by making them increasingly irrelevant and, taking away the income they need to finance their control mechanisms.
It is interesting that while they fight over borders to constrain populations for profit, we are making what they fight over largely irrelevant. WE might very well fail to reach a better outcome and could be crushed in the process, but I believe it is better to live doing something believed in, than die trying to survive under another's impossible rule.
The health of the current economy is impossible, because it only caters for the minority to benefit and, incentivizes the continual reduction of that minority until there is only one with supreme power and ultimate control. Do you think at that point, the system will be benevolent to its subjects?
Perhaps it is better to,
Fail attempting something great, than succeed doing something meaningless.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]