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Rich Dad Poor Dad
by Robert T. Kiyosaki

This book advises people on gaining financial independence. Mr. Kiyosaki draws from his life experience growing up listening to two opposing views, one of his dad (the poor one) and one his friend's dad (the rich one). According to the rich dad, poor people work for money, but rich people have money work for them. Many other differences are also outlined in the book. He suggests that one can get out of the rat race by being smart financially, instead of being very good in one's job. Therefore it's better to get a financial education (accounting, investing, law, markets) rather than a specialist education. Success in a job should not be the ultimate aim, but rather seen as a temporary occupation to help achieve financial freedom (work to learn, not work for money). One should not let fear of failure, job insecurity and risk get in the way.

Well, I guess everyone can try, but I don't think there's any guarantee of success. The author puts in an inspiring work to convince the reader on why one should not work for money, but there's not enough specific details on how to make money work for you (especially if you don't even have enough to start off with). I guess you'll have to buy another of his books for that. What he personally did was trading real estate and stocks while holding on to day jobs that taught him skills.

One thing I can't still reconcile with is that if nobody wanted to work for money (for example, after reading this book) then there will be economic chaos. So rich people like him take advantage of the fact that there are many smart people who are willing to work for money and remain a corporate slave. The rich gets richer, the poor stays poor. That's capitalism. But I really feel that something is wrong with capitalism, especially the form that it's taking in now. People say that it's not perfect but it's better than anything else (same analogy applies to democracy). Maybe I'm a socialist at heart.

Maybe the communist got one thing right - that there is no God. And ironically that would explain why capitalism and democracy have proven to be the best system around. Winner gets all. It's the survival of the fittest. Darwinian evolution. Haha, wouldn't that be a big joke if it was true? An alternative view would be that there is a God, and this life is just a trial before admitting us into the perfect afterworld*. That this life is no big deal and materialism is all bullshit. Shit on the money. Suffer now in anticipation of betters things to come. That takes a lot of faith and it'd be the biggest risk of all. *can there be such a thing as a perfect afterworld? How is it in there? Whose idea of perfect will it take form ?

.: 3/28/2002 :.

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