The nice thing with a calling — it is ever fluid, dynamic, and ever-changing.
Think about your aptitude as a seven-year-old kid, versus being a 27-year-old man, versus being a 36-year-old man? 
When I was a kid, it looked like my calling was to become a scientist, maybe an engineer, artist, as I was really really good at math, drawing, complex mechanics etc. But as time went on, it seemed that I had a great attitude and skill in thinking, philosophy, blogging, computers, the internet, design, web design, photography etc.
And now, I think I might be a genius in regards to money, once again, properly first generation, growing up poor, being the first generation to become rich. I see myself like a mini Jay-Z; from poverty to riches.
Owning your own money? 
Some quick overall thoughts: bitcoin, the bitcoin lightning network, the bitcoin digital wallet in your smart phone, the first time in human history where you could actually own your property, own your own money?
Also, ethics. Ethics is far more robust than feeble laws, which could be easily gamed. 
Why this matters
A funny thing I have noted and observed; anytime anybody talks about poverty, how we have to “fix” poverty, issues in America etc.… typically actually they come from a pretty affluent family. They talk about poverty, in abstract notions, without having any sort of real world embodied reality life experiences to comment on it.
As a simple suggestion, whenever you meet anybody who is a pseudo environmentalist, somebody who talks about poverty whatever… all these world social issues, maybe you got to drill them a bit, figure out if they grew up poor, wealthy, or “middle-class“ (which means rich). I can almost guarantee you that anybody who wants to fix poverty typically comes from a rich family. 
Also, anybody who you mention about bitcoin and they talk about how it is bad for the planet or whatever… they are simply social media news slaves.
My general thought is perhaps, nobody should really comment on, critique, or seek to “fix” poverty, who has actually never lived through it?
What is poverty?
Pauper– poor.
I think nowadays when we think about poverty, we think about people who live in squalor, essentially, maybe homeless people, unheeded people, or maybe families living in the hood?
Maybe poverty in America is more about living month-to-month, paycheck to paycheck, living in a sense of precarity… but what is the cause of poverty?
My simple thought, bad apples. Typically I’ll put more blame here on the men; when I think of poverty as a societal issue, I do not think about single people, I only think about families, husband and wife, man and women who have children. 
Poverty according to my definition is “non-men”– Matt, fathers, husbands, boyfriends etc. who are addicted to gambling, playing video games, smoking marijuana or doing drugs, and not being involved at all or caring about childcare. Also maybe fathers who do not work, do not make money do not earn money etc. 
Stop the bleeding
For example… my dad, pretty terrible human being, both physically and mentally violent and abusive to my mom, would often physically beat my mom, attack her with all this verbal violence, and never worked ever since I was two years old?
Now, whatever… pretty bad enough, but the real bad thing here is that he was addicted to gambling, and actually would still force my mom to give him the rent money, pretending like he’s going to pay it, and he will just take all that money, drive to Reno, and gamble it all away, saying that he was gambling in order to make money?
Only focus on the man, the father
So I wonder when it comes to poverty, you first gotta look at it… is the father, maybe the mother or somebody in the family addicted to gambling? 
Gambling might be one of the worst vices in modern day times. And here, I do believe in free will. And once again, it comes down to the individual. I cannot talk about society in general, but could certainly talk about the individual. Only the men.
If the father is a hard-working man, full of good virtue,  doesn’t gamble, doesn’t drink alcohol, not addicted to drugs or video games or television media etc.… then the family is not in property. 
Man or woman?
I think, when you really really think about it… Why is it that men get more addicted to gambling than women? Because I think that it comes for men, lust for power, risk and thrill. Let us connect the idea that testosterone, which is produced in the testes and men, is what gives men 1000 times more physical vigor, physical power, and hunger for power in regards to comparisons to women.
For example, I think for women, women have a will to Security, to safety, and for solidity. For example I think generally for a women, then between getting a good job, buying a home, earning a good salary, advancing through the corporate structure is earning money in order to gain more security, But in regards to men, I think we desire money for more power, more dominance, more exertion of our own willpower.
Gender vs sex
I remember when I was a kid… The notion of being a tomboy, or being “butch” for women was a thing.
And even now, this is what I have observed; for the most part, society is pretty tolerant of women, who desire to become lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, whatever. I think the nuance here is society is less tolerant when men decide to go the opposite way?
Example, let us say that you are born a woman, and you desire to present yourself as a man, use the men’s restroom whatever… Truth be told I don’t think any men would really care. However, let us say that you were born a man, You are 6 foot five, and you want to use the women’s restroom, this would cause a little bit more alarm.
I think gender fluidity is certainly a good thing. You could do whatever you want, wear whatever you want,  dress however you want, talk and act however you want… Etc. All good!
I think actually the only really really dangerous thing is when you get drugs, hormones, strange injections done. For example, this insanely bad idea of people who tried to inject hormones into their body to become a different sex? Maybe if it has to deal somewhat with life or death health complications, But otherwise, this is bad.
For example, I think society is pretty adamant on the fact that steroids and performance enhancing drugs is bad, even when it is done “safely”– why is society more tolerant of people taking strange hormones to change their sex?
Money matters
Anyways, going back to money.
This morning I was randomly thinking about bitcoin, bitcoin lightning wallet, bitcoin lightning network, etc.… And I had a thought:
is this the first time in human history which could actually own your own money?
I also think that the radical innovation here is in regards to the new transformation of property being money? 
I’ll give you an example: housing, owning a single-family home, or maybe owning some sort of commercial building or property.
It looks like the way things are going now, it is insane, you can’t really find a single-family house or home in Culver City for less than $2.1 million. I’m also starting to see new homes on the market for $3.5 million and beyond.
Certainly at the end of the day, you need somewhere to sleep, wake up, take a shower, make coffee, put your meat in the fridge in the freezer, cook your food whatever. Beyond this, that much money for a home, seems kind of insane to me.
With millennials, this generation older younger whatever, we are still suckered by this notion of having to buy a home in order to have this obscure notion of “security”.
For example, do men really desire to own a home? Or a house? Some philosophical theories:
Perhaps men desire a home, a single-family home, whatever or property, kind of like a citadel, or a fortress. I think the general desire is to own a single-family home, property, on top of a hill or on top of a mountain or a cliff, looking down, and looking beyond at all these plebeians beneath you, we desire a sense of superiority.
For women, the desire to purchase a home, a single-family home or whatever, is to and prevent fear; preventing the fear of being kicked out of the house, the fear of being kicked out of the home, a place where you could “nest “, down roots, etc.
If this is the case, then the goal isn’t actually to own property, to own a home, or to own a single-family house; 
- For men, the desire is the feeling or the lust for powers dominance, military dominance, feeling higher up and more superior to others, being ready for attack or defense, at any given moment?
- For women, the desire to feel a sense of safety or security, or protection from harm?
Then if this is the case, once again, it isn’t property, but money we desire. 
Then, I suppose the question is what is money?
Money & property?
Taking it a step further — what is the difference between money and property? Maybe there isn’t one? 
For example, when we see the prices of single-family homes entering the 34 $5 million mark, what does that really mean?
My penetrating thought then is that at that point, it isn’t even about the US dollar anymore, it isn’t even about money anymore; rather, maybe it is a signal that in fact, the value of the US dollar is plummeting; and the reason why things are more expensive is that each individual US dollar is now valued less, and as a consequence, it isn’t that things are getting more expensive, but rather, the value of the US dollar is simply going down. 
This then becomes a bit terrifying to the average person, because we are all brainwashed into saving, being industrious with our money, etc. 
So let us say you work really really hard, and you save $1 million in your bank account. If this is then the case, as time goes on, your money is bleeding value.
So let us say that once upon a time, the price of a single-family home was $1 million, but now, it is worth $1.5 million, $2 million, $3 million $4 million $5 million, and finally $10 million. It isn’t actually that the homes are increasing in value, but rather, the purchasing power of the US dollar is getting weaker. 
Then, if we think about money as a thermo dynamic thing, then let it say that it is like your house slowly losing heat and losing temperature, going from a lovely 75°, down to 70°, down to 60°, down to 50°, down to 40°, down to 30°, and finally eventually one day, 0°, slowly killing your family.
Heat retention?
Another interesting physics idea, let us think about money as heat, and the notion of not spending money is heat retention.
Also what I find interesting is technically, the human body has enough heat inside of it for us to always be warm, this issue is that he is being lost through our skin, through the environment.
The reason why we stay so nice and warm when we wear goose feather down jackets is that the feathers retain heat! It doesn’t add heat to us positively, like blasting a heater onto our bodies, but rather, we simply retain the heat we already got.
So I wonder, if the same analogy could be said that with money, poverty whatever… Is simply to retain it!
What people don’t understand about the “hood”
 I never grew up in the hood, even though my family was perpetually broke, and my dad will always gamble away the rent money, and I remember my mom telling me in the middle of the night in high school that be prepared that we might have to go to homeless shelter because my dad just gambled away the rent money, and that we were about three months behind in rent money… at least I always grew up in mostly safe environments, even though some of my friends, one of my best friends got into king bang, I remember him trying to convince me to meet his gang member boss, saying that was a good fit. I was a bit terrified when I saw my best friend with all these knife Marks on his back, I think he was posted on a street corner, maybe selling drugs or something, and I think he might’ve been in the wrong territory, so either the rival gang knocked him up in the back to teach him a lesson, or the knifing of the back might’ve been a gang initiation technique to toughen him up?
Anyways, I think what people don’t understand about generally growing up in a sense of parity or poverty is this:
You got quickly earned, and quickly spend the money, because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
For example experiments; what is the point of working hard to earn and save up $1000, if you know that your dad is just going to take it, go to Reno and gamble it away? Then the logical thing as a kid is to quickly use it, to buy cool clothes, to gain respect at school, maybe fix up your car because as a teenager with a drivers license, you actually own your car, and your car is almost like your mobile property or home, or money.
What is property?
I don’t know too much about the history of this, but I believe a lot of the early rhetoric of America, the founding fathers was the rights to private property, without having it snatched by a third-party or the government etc. This is why there are some bizarre things in the constitution or these weird amendments, The right to bear arms and guns, because you want to defend yourself from having British soldiers enter your home without permission, lodging your home, demand that they are fed and housed and bathed.
So I wonder about the whole gun thing, the right to own arms, the right to own gun, how much of that is actually self-defense about the life of yourself or your family members, versus trying to shoot somebody who’s trying to steal your stuff or break into your home? Not sure. 
What makes you feel more powerful? 
Let me do a Segway here, and let us get back to the point in hand. Once again the point here is money,
Money accumulation means to feel more power, to gain more power. For example, who is the most powerful person in the room? The person who command the most capital, the most money. Not the person who is wearing the most Gucci, because in theory they could be the poorest person in the room. If somebody is decked out in all designer clothes, drives the Lamborghini, but has zero dollars in their bank account, Not rich, they are poor, living in poverty.
The joke also goes that in Koreatown, all these Single Men Dr., BMWs, and Mercedes, but they all live in apartment with 12 other guys, living paycheck to paycheck, they live for their car, and not certain whether they lease their car, or finance it, real rich people don’t waste money on cars. Rather, a real rich person always invest money, the drive beat up older wheel efficient Japanese cars, and they would rather put all the money into the market, investments, or bitcoin instead.
Owning the stock versus owning the product.
Technically, if you really want to be rich or wealthy or powerful, you own the stock not the product.
For example, the problem about owning any sort of product, is that the value of the thing will slowly depreciate overtime, whereas typically stocks do the exact opposite thing, which is increase in value indefinitely overtime.
For example, I consider cyber truck one of the most awesome products created of all time. Essentially you could be like a modern day Batman, especially if you get the mat black wrap on the cyber truck. But, once again the issue… You feel high and mighty in your cyber truck, and you feel like you’re the boss, but actually in fact, does it actually make you more powerful, or do you simply feel more powerful? 
I think the nuance in the difference here is critical. For example, a heroin addict, or cocaine addict, or maybe somebody who is addicted to marijuana meth or some other drug… Certainly when you take these drugs, you feel a heightened sense of power. But does it make you more powerful? Of course not! In fact, it actually poisons your body and makes you positively weaker.
So once again, having a cyber truck will make you feel more powerful, but it won’t actually make you more powerful, unless for some reason or not, you could actually use your cyber truck as a military vehicle, guns blazing on the front lines of a war, but otherwise, maybe sticking to your Prius, conserving money, and stockpiling your bitcoin is the better idea.
Bitcoin is like economic bullets?
Let us say that when shit hits the fan, and all these weird anarchists, who pretend to be working on a farm, but in fact are addicted to their iPhone pros, Teslas, MacBook pros, drinking expensive wine, getting bad government national endowment of the humanities brands, or maybe driving around in their loser Range Rover — when you abolish all government corporations whatever… And things to evolve into anarchy, where are you going to purchase bullets?
In fact, bullets are 1 billion times more important than guns. I think it is the comedian Dave Chappelle who joked, the way to end homicide in America is to make bullets really expensive. If one bullet cost you $100,000, you really have to really really really think critically before popping that one guy.
Kind of like in John Wick, in which John Wick trades the rest of his gold coins, maybe 10 gold coins for a single pistol with seven bullets, in order to get revenge on his nemesis. 
So maybe, we could think of bitcoin, or Satoshi’s, like our economic bullets? Which could be used both for defense and offense? 
Spend your fiat as quickly as possible?
Certainly there is positive utility to having cash paper money. For example giving tips, being a squeeze, being in a situation in which you quickly want to leave, but you don’t want to wait around for the credit card machine, just leaving cash and saying goodbye.
But let us assume that your currency is losing thermal dynamic power and heat. Once again think about like a hot cup of coffee pull in as time goes on it gets colder. If you want to drink you drink immediately.
Or, another analogy to consider eating hot food. Do you want to eat the steak right now, do you want to eat the ribeye while it is still hot, if you eat it cold, it loses its flavor.
Or, you could convert the energy, convert your fiat currency into bitcoin, the first digital money,  as quickly as possible. A simple inverse relationship:
Over time, fiat currency is going to go down, and overtime, the value of bitcoin will go up.
 then the simple strategy is to simply quickly convert your energy and your power as quickly as possible, converting your Fiat currency into bitcoin as much as possible.
Also the thing that is puzzling to me is thinking about this: the value of a bitcoin is still pegged to the US dollar, so when we are trying to assess the value of a single bitcoin, we try to think about it in terms of the value of US dollars. However the reason why this is not a good analogy, is assuming that the Purchasing power of the US dollar is going down, wouldn’t the price of bitcoin goes up in US dollars, how do we know that is the value of bitcoin going up versus the purchasing power of the US dollar going down?
I think in the next 30 years, maybe we will start judging things directly to the bitcoin equivalent, not the US US dollar equivalent.
For example, if you want a single-family home, you won’t say it is 1 million or 10 million or 100 million or whatever, you will say that is worth one bitcoin, two bitcoin, three bitcoin etc.
And also maybe the numbers make more sense. To say single-family home is worth one bitcoin is the same as $1 million, $1 million is a lot of ones and zeros, a single denominator of a single bitcoin is much easier. 
21 million bitcoins?
I think if you think about this in terms of a micro view; kind of a big deal: if there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins forever, and let it say that you just give one bitcoin to every single human being, but then, that is assuming that there is only 21 million people living on planet earth. How many people live in America? 400 million? And what is the population of Los Angeles, 10 million? I wouldn’t be surprised if overtime, the population of LA balloons to 21 million individuals.
Let us do the mental math, let us say that there is 21 million inhabitants in Los Angeles and everybody wants a single family home. There is 21 million properties, for purchase or sale.
And let us say that everyone wants to live in Los Angeles, close to the mountains and close to the beach, because with global warming or whatever, climate wise it will be the best place to live on the planet.
Currently we are kicking ourselves in the butt for wishing that our grandparents bought a single-family home in Los Angeles windows only worth $5000 or something. But I think the same knowledge will happen to bitcoin when our kids grow up.
How to discover your calling
I think it is easy; but I think the problem here is that we deny it, we are too focused on the social economic utility of a certain professional calling or pursuit of life etc.
For example, when it comes down to it… Everyone wants to know how rich you are. Because in our capitalistic society, money is power. And is this true? Yes.
Let us imagine that everyone could walk around, like black mirror, and you could publicly see how much debt somebody has, or how many ones and zeros they have in their bank account or their digital wallet.
Once again I think the reason why the digital wallet notion is such a simple yet innovative idea is this:
In the year 2024, if I want to simply send money, why do I still have to do a wire transfer? 
Even more insane; why is it that in the year 2024, when trying to send a wire transfer, I have to pick up my phone, call my bank, talk to a real life human being situated somewhere in the Philippines, to approve my transaction? Or even worse, had to drive to a local bank location, fill out a form with pencil and paper, And then wait for 3 to 4 days for my transaction to get approved? This seems like some sort of hostage, the reason why I’m becoming more and more antagonistic towards these loser banks is that they’re holding our money hostage! Even insanely annoying things, I want to withdraw $500 from my checking account, and my bank locks me out?
Fuck the banks!
The future
I think the future is quite simple, everyone will still have iPhones, people will still drive cars, people will still chase money, the US dollar will probably be around for at least another 200 or 300 years.
Let us consider the global economy, it is all centered around the US DOLLAR. Even the Chinese Yuan is effectively pegged to the US dollar. Just consider that rich mainland Chinese businessman all must learn English, yet we do not make a mandatory for US business people to learn mandarin. 
Everyone will still be chasing happiness, wealth, the meaning of life etc. But my simple provocation: my simple call to arms:
Think critically about money.
Then all else will follow!
ERIC