(Guest Post by Tino, author of the winners blog.)
People do some crazy things for money. Seriously, they do. And I mean really crazy things. You know what? So do you. Yep, you do, and I’ll prove it!
Skeptical? Don’t think you do crazy things for money? OK, then, here’s how I’ll prove it. I’m going to list some crazy things that people have done for money, starting with some truly despicable stuff and, gradually, getting to some not-so-bad stuff, but still bad.
Here we go:
Kill a man for money: Absolutely despicable. But it has happened. I write a blog about people winning the lottery, so I could give you some examples of lottery winners being killed for money. Abraham Shakespeare won $31 million in the Florida Lottery. He was murdered by a “friend.” Jeffrey Dampier won $20 million in the Illinois Lottery. He was murdered by his sister-in-law. In both of these cases, the two men were murdered for their money. Have you ever done this… Killed a man for money? Oh boy, I really really hope not.
Swindle a person out of their life’s savings: Does the name Bernie Madoff ring a bell? How about Charles Ponzi? I won’t get into what these men have done, as I’m sure you already know. Would you follow in their footsteps and swindle people out of their life’s savings just so that you could be rich? Damn, I hope not. I think that just an extremely small percentage of people would, thankfully. With that said, out of the millions of people that read this blog, it’s probable that one or two of you would actually do this. Both of you are sociopaths; you need help!
Steal from a large corporation: There are many people that would consider stealing from a large corporation acceptable. They reason that, by doing so, the large corporation won’t even miss the money. Here’s an example of this – You exaggerate your insurance claim to your benefit. Guess what? That’s not acceptable. It’s theft. In the insurance example, it’s fraud. Have you ever done this? Listen, friend, it’s not acceptable; you’re crazy.
Fix a lottery ball machine to draw your numbers: Although difficult to do, seeing as you have to actually have access to the lottery ball machine to do it, it’s not impossible. Someone actually tried to do this in the 1980’s. The whole fiasco was dubbed “The Pennsylvania Lottery Scandal.” The perp was caught and spent time in jail. This situation’s kind of like the exact opposite of stealing large sums of money from big corporations. With the corporation example, you’d be stealing big money from one entity. With the lottery example, it would be like stealing a dollar or two from thousands of people. You might reason that stealing a dollar or two from people is nominal and that it wouldn’t even affect them, but that doesn’t make it right; you’d also be wiping out people’s trust in the lottery system. That’s crazy, but I’d guess you never actually did this, seeing as it would be quite difficult to do.
Have you done any of these crazy things for money? Probably not. Most people haven’t, thankfully. Here’s a question, though – Would you do any of these things if you knew for certain that you’d get away with it? I truly hope that your answer to the question is “no!” Doing these things would just make you a bad person.
I did, however, say that I could prove that you do crazy things for money. So here is the last crazy thing I want to talk about – Work for someone else.
Work for someone else? Is that really crazy? Yes. It is. Here’s why. In exchange for a wage or salary, when you work for someone else, you have a boss that tells you what to do with your time. When to come to work. When you can leave. When you could take a vacation. When you can eat your lunch, and how much time you have to do so.
In essence, if you work for someone else, that person gets to tell you what you can do with your time. It’s no longer up to you. It’s up to him. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, as I do it myself. I’m just saying that it’s crazy. Why is it crazy? Time is the most precious thing we have. Time is worth a lot more than money. I think it’s crazy to give another person total control our time, in exchange for money. Unfortunately, that’s the way the world works, whether we like it or not. I’m not saying this is bad or anything, just that we all do it (Or have done it). Imagine all the years of you’re life you’ve given to your boss and how many more years of your life he’ll still have control over. Crazy!
See… I told you that you do crazy things for money. Now do you believe me?
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Tino blogs over at the site, Big Lottery Winners. Stop on over and check out some of the stories!
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yep, there’s a reason why lottery winners don’t want anyone to know who they are and how much money they won… and then there are rich people.