Do you think it's easier for people to make money if their standards aren't very high?

Well, maybe in one sense, but in another there is danger of physical harm, of improisonment. No, I don’t think it is easier.

I would guess so… Now you got me wondering, how much did the… “Ladies” from two girls one cup make?

It is a myth that people earn good money are just based on honesty and hardwork. You will see many people at the top earn money based on lies and cheat. Honesty and hardwork are good value but nowadays people twisting things to suit their end goals, even to some world leaders.

If you look back to the old days like my parent era of value, yes, I think they did have better value than we are now.

It is definitely hard to compete in the market place with someone who has no conscience

I agree to an extent. There are some people that will simply do whatever they can to make money. It depends on the type of job and other factors as well, of course.

Easier? What do you mean, @Dutchess_III? Like, physically, mentally, the speed of accumulating money? I love your question. It has my mind racing thinking about the possible answers.

It might be easier to make a buck. I bet it is pretty hard to sleep with one eye open and wonder constantly when things are going to go south.

Oh, like, I had the looks to get any man I wanted. I could have just moved to California or DC and lain in wait for a rich man. I had offers of “hooking up” from rich men, just because of my looks. But I chose to work for it myself. People who deal in drugs make a lot of money (until they get thrown in jail…or not.)

I find that hard work, honesty and diligence never enabled me to become financially secure, let alone wealthy. I never made financial rewards a measure of my worth or of the value of my contributions in my academic field. I guess I never attained that which I never pursued as a high priority. I derived satisfaction from my decades of work and I would not change much even if given a do-over.

I hear you, @Dr_Lawrence. But what hard work, honesty and diligence does is allow you to hold your head up in the face of “You’re poor because you’re lazy and stupid.”

Before I read the details, I thought your question was about what standards of living people might be willing to accept, in order to grow their fortune more quickly. I guess both apply.

But what hard work, honesty and diligence does is allow you to hold your head up in the face of “You’re poor because you’re lazy and stupid.”

Do people really believe that hard work = more money, and no work = poverty? I grew up in a large family; my father worked hard all his life, and we never had a lot of money. Enough to get by, sure – but I grew up understanding that it’s not a linear relationship.

Hard work does not equal money does not equal happiness. These are all separate things, and we have to try to strike a balance between the three that makes us most comfortable – if we are even given a choice.

It is easier because there is a broader range of what they are employable for. Honest workers can have competition from those with low standards in areas of honest work; however, those with low standards have no competition from honest workers in the areas such as drug dealing, etc. There is an increased level of danger, but the question only concerns how easy it is to make money.

I don’t know if I would say easier. Being a drug dealer, for example, isn’t really all that easy a job and it’s one of the more dangerous occupations in the world.

Here is an example to consider: drug dealers pay children $100 to deliver a package for them.

What does this tell the child? Why should I flip burgers at McDonald’s, when I can make $500 a day delivering illegal drugs?

And yes, some people in projects have illegal activities to support their income.

I was thinking along the lines of how much money the porn industry and the pharmaceutical industry make, legally.

@lillycoyote But the drug dealers don’t consider the cost in human lives, in families, for children, when they choose their line of work. Danger and difficulty aren’t, in themselves, things to avoid—oil workers face that—but the lack of caring in the outcome of the dealer’s occupation is what is low-standard.

@bkcunningham I was thinking of the porn industry too.

I think it’s easier to make some quick money, and as @john65pennington notes, a big payoff for relatively easier work is attractive to someone who doesn’t know better. The problem with earning money immorally or illegally is it is hard to get out of “the life”; and your companions and co-workers are people in whom you cannot have any trust.

@Dutchess_III I wasn’t defending drug dealers. Your question just asked about whether it was easier to make money that way.

Good point @lillycoyote. I just wonder if drug dealers actually factor in the danger part of their job the way a, say, oil-pipe line worker does—who probably has to sign waivers. I’ll have to ask tomorrow!

Why is pornography dishonest?

@Londongirl Why you bashin’ Obama?

There are sociopaths and psychopaths throughout society and they all earn money one way or another.

So do the honest people.

The easiest way to make money is with a good brain and the skill to use it. It all requires hard work.

No. Porn, phone sex, drugs etc all pay peanuts to the bottom banana and that same person bears the majority of the risks for down time and penalties [jail, fines, criminal record, venereal disease, death]
As in any other business it is the businessman/woman who succeeds: a drug dealer of major proportion with many connections; a madam of a whorehouse, a manager of a phone sex [or fortunetelling] service etc. And the occasional porn “star.”

as Gertrude Stein didn’t say: a peon is a peon is apeon—and risks are greater for these peons.

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. As they say in dominoes, all money ain’t good money. Crime, if it is the right crime, can make tons of money quick. Would it be enough to really overshadow the risk? IMO, hardly, if you want some quick change to buy some electronic toys, some bling, and fancy car, but not a real exotic sports car, it can do that. It isn’t real wealth though. Until you can own property and have proper toys like a private jet, yacht, etc.

Fifteen to twenty in the big house is hardly the risk for money that doesn’t work passively to the point that you can earn more while you are sleeping than you can when you are awake.

It is not so much as making the money easy, but keeping it coming over the long haul. You can never make real wealth behind crime. If you are in that level the danger is 20 times greater. You can try to run a cartel, but everyone is gunning for you. You won’t get any money from robbing banks or smash and grab jewelry heist. A Ponzi scheme might work for a while but it is not secret, there is a paper trail. Even if you bail, your hands might still be dirty.

It all comes down to if you want your money to be like coal, starting slower but lasting longer, or be as kindling, flash up quick and be gone as quick also.

I knew someone who made a little money doing phone sex. And, unlike the usual cliche she was not an obese 50something dragon with dyed red hair and a wen on her chin. She was a pretty young girl and a daughter of a friend—this was way before caller ID back in the 70s. But shed made peanuts.
She made a lot more when she was old enough to be a bartender.

Pornography is wrong because it’s illegal. That opens doors for all kinds of underground abuses with no one to keep an eye on things. People get away with enslaving people, mostly women, and forcing them into doing things they don’t want to do.

Just like prostitution—if pornography it was legal we would have checks and balances on it that would keep a huge number of people safer than they are working in the shadowy underworld.

Anyone who willingly breaks a law that can cause such serious abuses and misery because it IS illegal, is lowering their standards.

@Dutchess_III, is pornography illegal?

There is a line. I guess, thinking about it…it’s that line that people want to cross. There is some pornography that people will go for no matter what so….well, now that I think about it, not much we can do about it.

@bkcunningham Absolutely. Again, not defending the porn industry, but only certain types of porn are illegal, basically just child pornography, as far as I know and the acts, the sexual exploitation of children that is required in order to produce child pornography. Also, engaging in any act that is illegal in the production of pornography or violating any law that governs the way in which pornography is be sold and/or distributed. But yes, producing and selling pornography is, for the most part, not illegal, and has been repeatedly shown to be protected under the first amendment.