Passive Income

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For some reason, my YouTube browsing seems to elicit numerous ads for what seems to be a prevailing trope: passive income. The way all thing's internet work, this is probably due to my curiosity about just what snake oil is being peddled, and lingering long enough for my profile to be tagged as interested in this shit. Whatever. I'm old, cynical and Bolshie enough to have developed an immunity to the siren calls of the Ponzi merchants and sundry other cyber muggers that dwell, wraith-like, in the ether of the web.

Passive income, of course, is the dream of everyone that has ever scraped a living in a crap job, or has by dint of social and economic marginalization, poverty or disability, had to similarly scrape by on benefits or charity. To find a way of earning cash that transcends the grind of either is pretty much the holy grail of the less well off: hence the golden lotto ticket dream, the Willie Wonka fantasy. A fortune gained for a couple of quid.

Of course, most of us realize that more money will be made out of our ever-shrinking funds than we will ever, in several lifetimes, reap as reward. But therein lies the rub. There is easy and safe passive income to be made, but only if you happen to be one of the fortunate few born into 'The Club': if you have land/property/fortune gifted to you as birthright; an expensive, connecting education that cements your place in 'society', or just get very, very, lucky, or embark on a career in the protection rackets, drug-running, etc. etc. For the most part, 'The Club' has it pretty much sown up, on all fronts.

What we see in our current government, it's ministers, and many of it's back-benchers, is the kind of access to ready cash/credit that fits the bill of passive income pretty much to a 't': the accumulation of wealth and it's subsequent management through the agencies of 'The Club'. Unfortunately, if you happen to live beyond the pale, you're just going to have to put up with snake-oil salesmen and shysters, and just get back on your bike and put up with it. I'm not saying that it's impossible to generate some income by being cute, but the ones in The Club hold all the aces, so beware: there be dragons. Things need so badly to change in this world, and for so many reasons...

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