Hey everyone,
When most people think of passive income, they picture a landlord, an ice cream shop owner, or a stock investor. All of these these things I find to be unethical.
But I’m wondering if you would consider there to be such a thing as ethical passive income?
Take for example: Someone flipping motorcycles, which is something I’ve considered doing myself. On one hand, if I fix up my bike using my own labor only, and then sell for a modest profit, it seems ethical because it’s by the fruits of my own labor (I understand that if you think deep enough, there is still people in the parts market being taken advantage. However, this is out of my control and an inherent aspect of living in a capitalist nation).
On the other hand, I see the issues with commodifying something vital like transportation. And while I don’t want to take part in that system, motorcycles are more of a recreational commodity (at least where I live where there is 6 months of winter). So I’m not sure if it’s as bad as flipping cars or houses.
In addition, it seems like with such low wages in the U.S., some form of passive income almost seems necessary to ever achieve retirement or avoid selling my labor for 40-60 hrs a week the rest of my life.
I’m interested to hear people’s opinion on this.
I think books are real interesting because all the labor comes from an author does to produce a book, which can then be printed (or digitally reproduced) without any more input of labor from workers and distributed to thousands of consumers. In the near future, as more jobs are automated, an engineer that designs a product would be very similar to an author, so maybe the analysis we can conduct on the case of an author will be very relevant soon enough?