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.
Flipping bikes is not “passive” income, it’s a ton of work.
Also, the answer is probably “no” but this is a “no ethical consumption under capitalism” sort of thing.
So, just some quick searching has a definition of passive income that is basically, income gained from little to no work on the earner's part.
So, flipping bikes, sounds like a fair amount of work. I mean, they weigh like several hundred pounds on average? You've gotta have some serious upper body strength. Its gotta take a lot of work to keep yourself in shape for flipping bikes.
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?
Good question. I don’t know if I’d consider that passive income, or just like, income. I think if you consider it passive that’d be a great example. I can’t really see much wrong with it
Sounds like what you're doing is side-income, not passive. But in my opinion, it's basically impossible to live ethically under capitalism anyways. If you have the ability to you might as well play the capital game and spend the profits on good things like homeless shelter donations and whatnot.
I've been selling 3D printed stuff that I designed and it feels like possibly the only form of moderately ethical passive income. If I was able to produce the plastic filament myself (it's possible, I just don't have the space) I would have the entire supply chain focused on myself. I design the product, I manufacture the product, I ship the product. Only things besides the filament out of my control are spare parts and USPS wages.
This is mainly passive because I've automated the process so I just click a button, go to sleep, and wake up to a finished product that I put in a box and ship.
The future is now. I have 3 printers and just broke even last week.
I know it's old school, but I've considered just setting up a gold sluice in some little-used section of river somewhere.
my take on stuff like this is, its possible to play the game and try to be good at it while simultaneously hating the fact youre forced to play it and that the rules are bullshit (and even better, trying to get everyone else to stop playing altogether). there's a certain threshold i think where you become 'part of the problem', eg actively resisting attempts to make the rules fairer, but this dont sound like it gets anywhere near that threshold to me. the game is capitalism btw.
Passive and moral? Probably not. I know some farmers who are paid by a power company to have a wond turbine on their land. That's the closest thing I can't think of to moral passive income. But even then you gotta factor in the ethics of land ownership.