"Costs" are Mostly Fake

A few years ago, I noticed that Amish neighborhoods are loaded with small businesses. There are woodworking shops, lumber yards, engine repair, welding shops, greenhouses, jam and jelly producers, plus retail shops in the Amish community that's about 20 miles from my house. Many Amish can apparently afford to have a business that only intermittently brings in revenue because they aren't operating on credit for the most part.

Reportedly, Amish tend to pay off debts like a mortgage as quickly as possible. Back around 2010 I decided to follow that model. We paid off our mortgage on our current property and now have no debt and there is a corresponding drop in cost of living, and my "need" for an income is greatly reduced.

Now marginally productive, revenue generating projects are purely positive. For example, we have chickens and ducks and sell eggs through our neighbor's egg stand. In recent years I sold garlic and pumpkins from the garden. Those activities are absurdly easy. I put a table by the road with a money box. People take the stuff and leave wads of cash or quarters.

There's not really any need to calculate an "ROI" or see if there's a net gain or net loss with those activities because we don't have any outside obligations. We don't need to squeeze productivity out of the chickens or ducks either so they get to live a royal life. It would be difficult for us to generate much revenue from the roadside stand though and that market would saturate quickly. I know the market is surprisingly large: many people exclusively buy eggs from farmstands because it's a much more sensible option than buying from the grocery store so all the egg stands along my road sell out 100% of the time. However, I don't know the full extent, but it might only be like $2000 a year. Also past a certain point, more infrastructure would be required.

"Costs", really debts are what keep people running on the hamster wheel of life. "The System" is a bunch of people running on hamster wheels on behalf of bankers and other parasites who in turn are heavily indebted to others to support their life.