0. Introduction
The suffering of young entrepreneurs and small business owners today isn’t due to a lack of food or clothing. It stems from the agonizing paradox of working relentlessly yet remaining broke—an unrelenting obsession with the need to be “more productive.” I call this Money Dysmorphia. Granted, this pressure can act as a form of “creative tension.” After all, a full stomach rarely seeks the meaning of existence. However, as discussed in previous articles, reacting to the feeling of having “nothing left” doesn’t mean we are limited to only two choices. There is a path that is neither a “100-to-0” gamble for a life-changing jackpot nor a “gray zone” of merely surviving on breath alone. In this article, Let’s talk about this.
Previous Articles:
- Money Dysmorphia (Part 1): Working Hard to Stay Broke — The Death of Economic Leverage
- Money Dysmorphia (Part 2): The Collapse of Social Leverage — The Death of Individual Competence
- Money Dysmorphia (Part 3): The Real Reason You Always Feel Poor—Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey Scam
- Money Dysmorphia (Part 4): Why the 2030 Generation is Escaping the State’s Matrix
1. The Third Way: Recovery of Personal Sovereignty
Money Dysmorphia is not an individual failure. The democratic welfare state system exerts a structural pressure that erodes economic and social leverage in the name of equalization. Yet, revolution is not an option. In a democratic system, the “people” are the sovereign, and there is no mechanism to overturn the system itself.
There is only one explorable alternative: Recovering personal sovereignty while coexisting with the state system.
(1) Wild Survivability
The state organizes space and dictates how we spend our time within it. Personal sovereignty means refusing to be subordinate to those regulations. It is a way of living that organizes the civilized world according to one’s own will—utilizing its advantages while maintaining absolute freedom. I call this Wild Survivability. This isn’t about retreating into the woods like Thoreau. It is about following the teachings of Zhuangzi: parasitically living on the boundaries of the system and “cherry-picking” its benefits.
To achieve this, the fruits of your labor must not melt away over time. Civilized society teaches us to accumulate assets in visible forms—houses, cars, and families. But is this truly what you value? Perhaps, perhaps not. But one thing is certain: the state wants you to own them. Visible assets are legible and easy to tax. Even as your value melts away into taxes, depreciation, inflation, and demographic collapse, the state takes no responsibility. If life is a constant struggle just to protect the value you’ve created, how exhausting must it be? To prevent the state from dissolving your assets, you need Wild Survivability.
The logical conclusion is this: To recover personal sovereignty, you must first build a system where the fruits of your labor do not vanish but accumulate as true assets.
(2) Strategy 1: Abstract Assets to Make Them Hard for the State to Seize
Let’s look at historical examples of Wild Survivability against state power.
France, 1306. The royal treasury was empty. The crown arrested its creditors and forcibly confiscated their assets. This event is known as the origin of the “Friday the 13th” superstition. The lesson is simple: The state does not protect creditors in times of crisis. It uses law and violence to solve its own problems.
The more physically fixed an asset is, the more it becomes a target for property and income taxes. The more abstracted an asset is, the higher its mobility and escapability. Historically, some financial networks began converting assets from physical forms like land and gold into ledger rights and credit. They reduced visible property and abstracted wealth into movable rights. This private credit network eventually evolved into bills of exchange, stocks, and futures—forming the foundation of global finance.
Unlike medieval Europe, however, today’s private credit networks have been largely absorbed into state laws and institutions. Stocks, bonds, and notes are all under state control. When a government, having succumbed to populism, tightens the noose of taxes and regulations, there is no way to resist.
Therefore, entrepreneurs must secure Bitcoin Cold Wallets + Tax Non-resident Status as the ultimate insurance for emergencies.
(3) Strategy 2: Accumulate Content Assets on the Fringes of the Welfare System
The second strategy for Wild Survivability is accumulating content assets at the boundary of the welfare system. There is a profound paradox in democratic welfare states like Germany and South Korea. These systems were designed for a middle class that works hard, pays taxes, buys homes and cars, and works for a lifetime.
When welfare systems—originally intended for social integration—combine with democracy, they become structures that are nearly impossible to fix, even when side effects emerge. The result is arbitrage at the boundaries. A paradox arises where the tactical navigator, who utilizes welfare benefits, lives a freer and more stable life than the diligent taxpayer. This isn’t a matter of individual morality; it’s a matter of the rules of the game.
The YouTube channel Radical Living is a practical example. Through comedy skits, it shows how the German welfare system exploits taxpayers. the creator satirizes the system while simultaneously building a path out of it.
[Video: German Kindergeld & Burgergeld]
The value and originality of content and knowledge assets are guaranteed by global platforms and user networks. These are different from legacy assets that must be registered with a specific country’s tax office or court. The key to Wild Survivability is reducing assets recognized by the state and accumulating assets recognized by global platforms—ideally while leveraging welfare benefits.
[Real Case: The Novelist Accumulating Intellectual Assets on the Fringes]
In South Korea, there was a businessman who ran a large pub. The business failed, debts piled up, and normal repayment became impossible. He chose a “paper divorce” and personal bankruptcy. Legally, he became a “zero-asset, zero-income” senior living alone—the exact demographic the administrative system protects first.
His tactical choices were as follows: he covers living expenses with daily cash-in-hand labor (singing rooms, restaurant serving) while participating in self-reliance work programs. His actual life is not destitute; his medical bills are covered by public support, and he lives in subsidized housing. Discounts apply to his transportation, communication, and cultural activities.
You might want to curse at this—why would a healthy man live like this? But the situation isn’t that simple. This man was once a diligent taxpayer. After his business collapsed, he made the choice that resulted in the least loss within the system. We must honestly ask ourselves if we would have chosen differently in his shoes.
[But this man is not just “holding on”]
His true identity is a novelist writing Wuxia (martial arts) fiction in public libraries. While most would suffer a crushed ego in this situation, he remains indifferent to the gaze of others. He uses the minimum survival zone guaranteed by the state as leverage to build an archive of intellectual property. The tax office cannot yet tax this asset. If it goes viral and gets adapted into webtoons or dramas, he could become wealthy. He posts on web-novel platforms; it’s not popular yet, but he enjoys the process. If he succeeds, he will become a diligent taxpayer.
[This mirrors Taleb’s Barbell Strategy]
The core of Nassim Taleb’s Barbell Strategy is avoiding the middle. Instead of taking moderate risks, you should pursue extreme safety and extreme risk simultaneously. The novelist entrusted his survival to the state and bet his potential on creation. He has zero downside risk and infinite upside potential.
I do not see this man as a parasite exploiting the system. I see him as brilliant. The real problem isn’t the man; it’s the democratic welfare system itself—a game board designed to be most cruel to those who are “moderately diligent.”
Who should we blame? From an investment portfolio perspective, diligent people are those who signed up for a 2% fixed-deposit account. They commute daily, earn moderately, and pay taxes. They won’t go bankrupt, but they have zero chance of a “jackpot” that offsets inflation and depreciation. The novelist exited that path. He left survival to the system and staked his final possibility on a personal project. A person with potential who is immersed in the process does not suffer from Money Dysmorphia. He is a high-stakes player betting on an unending narrative.
(4) Those Indifferent to Social Capital
Looking at the case of the ‘Wuxia novelist,’ those possessing Wild Survivability may appear to be ‘lonely’ figures detached from conventional society. To the observer, they seem to lack the social capital of human relationships. This assessment is correct. Indeed, without the sense of kinship found in a library’s smoking room, there would have been no occasion for me to even engage in conversation.
However, he feels no ennui or inferiority. This is because he is engaged in ‘Production’ rather than ‘Consumption,’ abstracting his assets and embodying his skills. Having already tasted failure once and now living parasitically on the fringes of the system, he has nothing left to lose. To him, the satisfaction of freedom—the ability to immerse himself in building a better tomorrow—far outweighs the comfort of social assimilation.
In reality, social capital like ‘loyalty’ or ‘credit’ is often hollow. Most interactions are merely ‘scans’ of an opponent’s assets and credit, masked by questions like “Where do you live?” or “What do you do?” The intent is transparent: to feel ‘Ressentiment’ toward those who have more, and to extract cheap dopamine from those who have less.
Because Wild Hustlers lack visible assets (apartments, cars, titles) and instead focus on embodied or abstracted wealth, they are dismissed as ‘nobodies.’ Yet, this is precisely their advantage. In a populist democracy, being a ‘negligible underdog’ is a surprisingly strategic position. Democratic citizens, fueled by high moral self-esteem, generally do not bully those they perceive as ‘weak.’ Their brand of ‘solidarity’ is never truly egalitarian; it functions primarily by excluding and attacking the ‘strong.’ In such a state, swinging the ‘moral cudgel’ is mistakenly believed to be the society’s natural self-cleaning mechanism. If you have ever felt a slight sense of catharsis hearing about a peer’s failure, you have fallen into this trap. I admit, I have been there too.
In conclusion, those tethered to social capital are obsessed with the consumption of visible assets. They cannot tolerate others becoming ‘strong,’ yet they themselves are desperate to appear ‘strong.’ They cannot stop this cycle, even knowing it eventually invites a moral lynching, because constant comparison provides the ‘variable reward’ (dopamine) of either pride or indignation. Conversely, the Wild Hustlers investing in ‘Invisible Assets’ enjoy an asymmetric advantage. They are treated as social underdogs, leaving no ‘meat’—no legal or moral friction—for the masses to chew on. Thus, they remain immune to moral censorship. They are solely focused on one thing: building their own Noah’s Ark for the inevitable flood.
(5) Strategy 3: What is Evergreen Content?
The novelist I mentioned abstracted his assets not into finance, but into an archive of intellectual property. It’s a brilliant strategy. Intellectual property doesn’t depreciate. There are no holding taxes. It cannot be seized. While IP takes time to build, it accumulates as a permanent archive. Once it hits, it transcends borders. Most importantly, the process is engaging. That’s what matters. Mediocre stability dulls the spirit; mediocre challenges leave nothing behind. The question then naturally shifts:
“I want to build an archive that becomes intellectual property, but how do I actually build it?”
The hint lies in the fact that the man writes Wuxia (martial arts) fiction. It’s set in ancient China, yet it’s still entertaining today. This is Evergreen Content.
What is Evergreen Content? It is the art of unravelling Diachronic (timeless) themes through Synchronic (contemporary) language. Problems like the meaning of life, survival strategies, the logic of capital, and justice/morality are cyclical and eternal. Even AI cannot solve these existential dimensions. The goal is to articulate these through modern language and scenes to appeal to today’s audience.
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky possess diachronic depth, but their language is archaic and difficult for modern readers. In contrast, Wuxia fiction remains readable because it can seamlessly integrate modern humor.
The same applies to fishing guides or illustration tutorials. The problems are repetitive, and the “human touch” cannot be replaced by AI. That is its diachronic nature. Combined with editing optimized for platforms like YouTube, it gains synchronic appeal.
There are three types of Evergreen Content:
| Type | Core Value | Diachronic (Timeless) | Synchronic (Modern Detail) |
| Problem-Solving (How-to) | Functional Utility | Fundamental pains: Health, Money, Relationships. | The tools and methods change with the times. |
| Insight-Driven Worldview | Frames of Interpretation | Original structures and frames for interpreting the world. | Specific social phenomena being analyzed. |
| Lifestyle Persona | Emotional Bonding | There is no “info” or “insight”—the way of living itself is the content. | Intellectual aesthetic and stylistic “vibe.” |
This structure doesn’t just apply to creators. It applies to your career CV as well. A history of solving problems, an insightful perspective, and the charisma that makes people want to work with you—without these three, you are merely trading your labor for a paycheck.
The asset is the archive that allows you to stand alone, without the shell of a corporation.
2. Reject the Hero’s Journey; Trust the Bricolage Narrative
Let’s return to the core: How do we cultivate Wild Survivability?
👉 It requires Wild Thinking.
In Part 3, we discussed how the “Hero’s Journey” narrative sickens the modern psyche. We must firmly reject it. We need the conviction that our path is the right one. Living on the fringes of the state system may trigger guilt or a sense of helplessness—a feeling that you aren’t a “useful” human being.
But that is a moral “original sin” fabricated by the state. There is no need to be intimidated. If you succeed later, you can pay your taxes then. Tell them to wait. The state doesn’t run this system for us; it runs it to maintain itself. Utilize it without hesitation. Your path isn’t fixed, because there is no “correct answer” to begin with. While I’ve explored several alternative narratives on this blog, I want to introduce one that perfectly fits Wild Survivability: Bricolage.
(1) What is a Bricolage Narrative?
This is a concept from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s The Savage Mind. It is the art of creating utility, aesthetic value, and meaning using whatever is at hand. The “Civilized Man” establishes a concept first and buys materials with money. The “Savage (Wild) Man” identifies the characteristics of materials scattered around him and combines them. For example, if a Civilized Man has sticky skin, he goes to buy soap. The Savage Man takes tree bark from his shed, makes it lather, and uses it as soap.
This way of thinking developed in the “Wild” for two reasons:
- Since their controllable world is small, they reduce uncertainty by changing combinations to fit the context.
- Since resources are scarce, they maximize what they have.
In Savage Thinking, a single object can have dozens of uses. Every uncertainty and accidental element is removed. It doesn’t matter if it’s subjective or even magical—as long as it makes sense and provides meaning, it works. It may not be the “smartest” way, but it is the most comforting.
In contrast, Scientific Thinking defines concepts and explains phenomena through causality. It’s clean and precise, but phenomena that cannot be explained by a specific concept remain in the “unknown.” When Geocentrism fails, Heliocentrism arises; when Classical Mechanics fails, Quantum Mechanics emerges. It leaves uncertainty and chance as they are. It’s smart, but it refuses alternative interpretations and increases the uncertainty of life.
Consider the Azande people studied by Lévi-Strauss.
- Civilized Man: Asks “How did it break?” and identifies causality. Subjective meaning is left to chance.
- Savage Man: Identifies “How it broke” and connects it to subjective life meaning.
When an Azande granary pillar collapsed and killed someone, the cause was termites. Science explains why the pillar collapsed, but it cannot explain why that person happened to be there at that moment. That is “coincidence.”
The Azande know it was termites, but that doesn’t explain their life. So they explain the coincidence. They add interpretations—whether the person was being punished morally or was cursed. By explaining “what the collapse means to my life,” they fill the void that science leaves empty.
Bricoleurs are those who live with this Wild Thinking.
- Twist the systems of the state and society to your advantage.
- Create a new context of use.
- If it feels plausible enough, create your own meaning and give yourself a nod of approval.
- Take the meaning you’ve created and spread it as a “narrative” to those who fear uncertainty.
(2) The Boundary Between Entrepreneur and Laborer: The Delivery Rider
In Korea, there is a tendency to look down on delivery riders. But through Wild Thinking, they are read differently: They are free men. A rider possesses the characteristics of both an independent contractor and a laborer.
Because of this, they can write off motorcycle depreciation, fuel, repairs, communication, and even helmets and pads as business expenses. They keep their on-paper net profit at a minimum. Their taxes converge to zero. Because they also have “laborer status,” they are covered by employment and accident insurance. The criteria are tricky, but the door is open. When they are ill, they leverage unemployment benefits or accident compensation. While the body is resting, the brain is working. They accumulate Bitcoin, write books, and plan YouTube content. They use AI to scour delivery worker support policies and claim every benefit.
The lifeblood of Bricolage is detail and the ability to combine. Understand the system to its core and apply it to your advantage.
One of the pains of office workers is having no time to exercise. They waste their lives commuting. The system rewards them with titles and suits as compensation. When I worked as a delivery rider, I didn’t waste my life on a commute. Exercise and self-development happened simultaneously. I listened to articles via TTS and tuned into podcasts. My body moved as I climbed stairs and hills. Since it was the COVID era, contactless delivery was the norm—no need to argue with customers.
Of course, many riders play games while driving, curse the platform, or fall into gambling. That is an act of desperation born from a lack of conviction that their path is right. You don’t need to conform to the “Slave Morality” enforced by the state. It doesn’t matter if others mock it as “coping.” How I imagine, combine, and cherry-pick is entirely my freedom.
Survival is Morality.
(3) Do Not Blindly Follow the Myth of Specialization
How do we master the art of Bricolage? It is not through the deep “specialization” of knowledge in a single field. In the past, specialized knowledge was valuable only because it was scarce. The barriers to entry were high, licenses guaranteed a monopoly, and technological shifts were glacial. If you made it into a top-tier medical or law school, your life was essentially secured.
Today, that world is dead.
You don’t need a medical degree to diagnose yourself; AI provides self-prescription for most internal ailments. Even a layman like me can distinguish between Amorolfine, Terbinafine, and Hydrocortisone. A friend of mine recently won a pro se lawsuit using nothing but AI—he even managed to seize their bank accounts without a lawyer.
Mediocre expertise is no longer a viable career path. You are left with three choices:
- Become a titan of knowledge so elite that even AI must learn from you.
- Form a union and launch a futile Luddite resistance.
- Become an Artist of Meaning who plans the grand narrative and assembles fragments into a whole.
The Bricolage narrative belongs to the third path. To walk it, you must “dabble” in various fields and maintain an intermediate level of knowledge across them.
Remember: the “Wild Man” may know less about the scientific properties of wood than a botanist, but scientists often took notes as they watched the Wild Man create entirely new contexts for a simple wooden fragment.
When you stay in one field too long, your paradigms, lineages, and assumptions harden into a cage. When resources are abundant, your thinking shifts toward simply “finding the right tool” rather than creating one. You understand objects superficially and fail to imagine new contexts. In contrast, those with “intermediate” knowledge across diverse fields—the tinkerers—interpret phenomena by cobbling together whatever is at hand. Creative discovery is born in the patchwork.
Michel de Certeau likened this Bricolage thinking to the Greek concept of Metis—cunning, tactical intelligence applied at the perfect moment. His collaborator, Pierre Mayol, called this an “ensemble” that appropriately (propriety) combines the ambiguous characteristics of a situation.
Take the street vegetable vendor. He shouts, “Squeeze this carrot, and the juice will overflow!” 🤣 He strikes the precise boundary between revealed and hidden desire at the perfect moment. He makes the customer laugh and closes the sale. A food scientist cannot do this; he would explain beta-carotene and antioxidant properties. The vendor has no degree, but he sells more.
In the old world, a “jack-of-all-trades” was considered useless or lacking persistence. Today, the artists who plan, combine, and synthesize diverse contexts to create new meaning are the ones who capture the value.
(4) Sharpen Your Skills by Minimizing Your Gear
What is the engine of Bricolage? It is Scarcity. The anxiety that comes from being thrown into a vast world with minimal resources is the catalyst. Bricolage is the Agency we exercise to control that anxiety. Its core is the “plausible narrative”—the creative leap we take to avoid uncertainty. Because we have little, we must understand the details to their core so we can repurpose them again and again.
Civilized Thinking is the opposite. It seeks to maximize tools. In that world, he with the most money is King. The “Shaman who spins plausible tales based on imagination” is King in the Wild, but in Civilization, he is confined to a psychiatric ward. In Civilization, no one fills the void of uncertainty; those without money suffer from Money Dysmorphia, agonized by what little remains of their lives. Wild Thinking is the cure for Money Dysmorphia.
To practice Wild Thinking, you need the ability to create new meaning from the minimal objects you possess. To do this, you must sharpen your skills by minimizing your gear.
Korea is a nation obsessed with productivity, and thus, infected with “Gear Disease” (Jangbi-byeong). People don’t enjoy the process of fishing; they ask how many fish were caught. To start fishing, they join a club to learn about equipment because “wasting time” scratching the riverbed with a simple jig head is considered boring. A “master” in these clubs shows up with Shimano reels, Gore-Tex, polarized sunglasses, and dozens of expensive lures. If the fish still won’t bite, they use sonar and smartphone apps to find them. In such a society, Bricolage is impossible. Because “New Gear” fills the space where meaning should exist.
I fish with only two types of jig heads, a rod, and three reels. With less gear, I can feel the riverbed more acutely through the line. I become more sensitive to the objects the lure touches. The Mtkvari River, Gori has a strong current and a muddy bed; if you hesitate for a second, you’re snagged in seaweed and trash. I enjoy every bit of this process.
- Where is the wind blowing least?
- Behind which rock is the fish hiding?
- Why did the current suddenly shift and create bubbles?
Two or three hours vanish in this exploration. Even if I catch nothing, I am satisfied. Gear can be added slowly as needed. The important thing is the training of making meaning for oneself. In an era where AI dominates functional efficiency, this is where human added-value is born.
3. Conclusion: A Narrative Built with Empty Hands
Money Dysmorphia is not a symptom of your incompetence. It is the result of collapsed economic and social leverage; a world where the fruits of your labor are exhausted just by the act of breathing. The assets the state encourages you to hold are melting away in the fires of taxes, inflation, and depreciation.
Recall the novelist writing Wuxia fiction and the fisherman with two jig heads. In the eyes of Civilization, they are failures. But in the eyes of the Wild, they are freer than anyone else. They accumulate assets the state cannot seize, and they assemble the meaning of life using scarcity as their raw material.
Because they lack gear, they read the flow of the river more sensitively. Because they lack capital, they create more original stories. Reject the Hero’s Journey. Create value through Wild Thinking, bricolage-ing a new world out of the fragments you already hold.
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