It is interesting how things fall into place. I read the 4-Hour work week by Tim Ferriss and was skeptical until I read it. Then this book shows up on my desk. Needless to say Chris Guillebeau has the right idea. People are sleep walking through life. They get up, work, go to bed and get up again. Before they know it, they are 60 years old and wondered what the heck happened. When you’re a kid and followed the crowd typically you got in trouble and were told – “If everybody jumped off a bridge, would you follow?” Now when you are older you go to school, get a secure job, buy a house and die. If you do not follow all the people off the bridge then you are an outcast. Chris is an outcast of excellent stature. This is a great book. Let’s dig in…….

Why is this important to me?
Well let’s consider some things: Education today in the U.S. is a bit of a joke. We rank 25th of all the industrialized nations. This is horrible. Worse than that, kids are graduating college with mountains of debt and not getting jobs. Education cost is the only market that has been rising steadily and far exceeding growth in other areas.

You may ask: Why is Education so expensive and not really helping in the job market? There is so much loan money out there that the universities know they can charge more because there is money to be borrowed. It sounds like a bit of a paradox – students cannot afford college so let them go get money and pay for it for the rest of their lives. Worse than that for every engineer/tech person that makes stuff, our universities graduate 18 Lawyers and 50 MBA students. This means that one person creates actual utility and 68 people manage it. Read the rest of this entry »