What is the rat race: You go to college, graduate, get an ideal job, work hard to get promotions to support your family before retiring. You could substitute owing a business for getting a job, for the sake of this argument. Always trying to beat others in what you do.
But it’s not the only model of life. All you are doing is paying for convenience.
Think about this. You and your wife bring home 120k a month ( 1.4m a year). You make 80k, she makes 40k, or vice versa. But you live in a home worth 4 m. That is about 3 years of your living wages. In simple terms, mathematically, you worked 3 straight years and put those earnings into building that house and nothing more. No contribution to any expense.
But what if you built that house yourself. Yeah I know you will argue that you can’t, because of aristocratic leftover mentality from the British colonialist. Ati you need an architect, or structural engineer or electricians services. But you can. Our grandfathers built their own homes. Yet when it came to stone structures, we stopped. Brick is made from the same soil they built their homes. @MachaaWaHadithi built his own house on Ktalk. Anyways, it won’t take you 3 years to build a house if you put up a wall every week ( yeah that slow) with your bare hands. It wont even take you a year. So, 2 years of your pay is a premium for convenience. Some will argue cost of materials, prerequisites a income from a job. But I will remind that bricks can be baked from clay. Which is free from the earth.
And when you start building everything, you will have goods and services to barter. True that nobody can can make everything, but cost for help is a small fraction of purchasing something wholesome.
I used the example of a house, but let it not limit your imagination. Yeah you bought a 2015 Demio from Japan for 1m, but what if you got a 2001 Toyota body and rebuilt a engine yourself. Most will argue they dont have the skills but you can advantage a time factor. Instead of a mechanics 12 hours, yours can be a week. And with school for your kids, you can always homeschool to preuniversity.
Theres people who have chosen to give up conveniences and comforts of the Rat Race. I havent seen one do it fully locally, but there are quite a number. Some live on the sea, some in remote reserves, some in frozen Tundras, but theres quite a number.
In fact what I have described above is what impales Africans from advancement. We have been taught that there’s only a certain way to do things. And only that way. And costs associated, are prohibiting factors to other ways.
