I moved to San Mateo earlier this year for a new job. One of the most stressful parts of the move was finding an apartment. As you know, housing in the Bay Area is extremely expensive and competitive. As it turned out, my desire to live closer to work removed a lot of choices online, and in the end, I only ended up touring about 4-5 places.

One of the places we toured was a tall apartment complex right near the big street. The leasing agent told us that the building was originally constructed in the late 1940’s for families moving to the Bay after World War 2. It had been renovated multiple times and certain units (like the one I toured) had shiny new appliances.

Apart from the age, the building was very solid and I seriously considered moving in, if it was not for the fact that the parking situation was a bit chaotic, and another complex happened to not have this problem.

It really made me reflect on how different the attitude towards work was back in the 1940s and today. Back then, people were more materially poor, but they did honest work, were optimistic, and willing to sacrifice to build things that had value. The fact that an apartment building built back then could still stand so tall today is a testament to this. In addition, places like the Empire State Building in New York or the Golden Gate Bridge were built in only a few years but still stand the pressures of modern living.

At my parent’s house, which was built less then 10 years ago, the paint on the walls have already started peeling, the drain has clogged up more then once, which needed repairs, the gutter has clogged up multiple times despite it being “fixed”, and a little chunk of the plywood floor chipped off in the basement. Why is everything such poor quality nowadays? I have a theory…

Nowadays, there is just so much money in the system that no one really has an incentive to work hard anymore. Why work a job when you can gamble on DraftKings and Bitcoin 24/7? Why should we be fiscally responsible when the Federal Reserve can just print more money infinitely (Thanks gulf states!)? Why do honest work when doing shoddy work just gives more opportunities later to make more money fixing your previous errors?

My hot take: money should be harder to make, or at the very least it should only follow the value of the work being created.

Your work is the part that has value; money is just a way to motivate you to do work. Look at the people who have had to quit their jobs to take care of their sick parents or grandparents. The market doesn’t value their work in any respect, but if no one was acting as caretakers, there would be no families and consequently no societies anymore. Is that what we really want?

Focus on producing something of value, and the rewards will follow. This is how I want to live.

CZ