The ChatGPT Millionaire Phenomenon

AI and the Distraction of Economic Individualism

The sheer number of books with “ChatGPT” and “millionaire” in their title is staggering. Here are just a few on Amazon:

• Chat GPT Millionaire Gold Mine by Austin Welch

• ChatGPT 4 Millionaire 2024 by Alec Rowe and Rory Young

• ChatGPT Millionaire Bible by Alexander Loxley

• ChatGPT Millionaire Mastery: How to Earn Online as a Freelancer or Gig Worker by Ivan So

• ChatGPT Millionaire: A Beginner’s Guide to ChatGPT and Passive Income Strategies for Financial Freedom by Drake Cox

• The ChatGPT Millionaire by Neil Dagger

• ChatGPT Millionaire Bible: How AI Can Build You a Million-Dollar Business to Become Financially Free by Harold Pearson

• Unleashing the Millionaire Power of ChatGPT by FutureFront Publishing

• ChatGPT Millionaire 6 Books in 1, The Ultimate Guide For Build a Successful Million-Dollar Business by Steve Winchester

Ironically, ChatGPT likely wrote all or most of these books, including their titles.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, books demonstrating how to use ChatGPT to build community or grow in virtue are conspicuously lacking from Amazon’s search results.

Gen AI promises us financial freedom. But even if it delivers, what do we gain? Today’s post is about the costs of such AI-inspired economic individualism.

As Rich as Croesus Neil Dagger

As per Amazon, 2,500 people have bought or read Neil Dagger’s book (listed above) in the past month. The book runs roughly 100 pages in length. At $12.99 per book, that’s $32,475 in a month. If he keeps it up, Neil will make $389,700 before taxes this year. Not bad, Neil, not bad at all.  

Greed is a powerful motivator. So is fear of missing out. Combine them both, and you get the ChatGPT millionaire phenomenon.

After a slight bit of digging, I found Neil’s website: retiredecadesearly.com. On his blog post “How to Generate Passive Income using ChatGPT (Part 1),” he includes the following:

If the thought of working till you’re 65 terrifies you and you want the freedom to start living your life while you’re still young then download this free guide that will let you retire decades earlier by following only 4 simple rules – I used this guide to go from having no savings to the brink of retirement in just 7 years.

What’s the point? The point is that for Neil, and for many others, financial independence (aka retirement) is the end goal. Whether it is ChatGPT or some other technology/technique, there’s got to be some sort of golden shortcut to retirement.

But what happens when you get there?

Some of the retired people I know began to seriously question the meaning of their existences shortly after retiring. One 64-year-old I was talking to just the other day expressed his disgust with being retired and having nothing to do. He is going to pick up another job to “stay busy.” Another 60+ year old once told me that he’d contemplated suicide after having retired. He has since found another job.

We know it is true that money cannot make us happy, and yet we’re always seduced into thinking that this is the way. We see others who have made their millions as entrepreneurs, and we want the same thing for ourselves. After we make our million, we won’t have to be dependent on anyone.

This is an illusion, of course.

Most likely, you didn’t make your shoes, your shirt, your home, your car, etc. Most likely, you didn’t clear the land you’re living on, pave the roads, dig the infrastructure for the sewage, lay the fiber for the Internet, etc.

With 100% certainty, you didn’t make the language you’re using. You didn’t teach yourself to speak or to read. You didn’t make your own body.

You are a dependent rational animal. As Corey Anton discusses in Sources of Significance, money obscures our perception of dependence. It takes a deliberate act of the will to see how we are integrated into communities and depend on others to flourish.  

The Moral of the Story

Perhaps ChatGPT can make you a millionaire. Yet, here is the great irony:  You can spend years making your money by building a small business, YouTube channel, or Instagram page and still find yourself in a city, state, or country that is not worth living in. You’ve misplaced your attention.

I’m here to tell you: Don’t misplace your attention.

Economic individualism, the pursuit of our own materialistic ends at the exclusion of other goals, distracts us from building a common culture, community, and civilization. In essence, economic individualism makes you an idiot, literally someone who is more preoccupied with his own private affairs than with the commonweal.

Do you want to flourish? Do you want your kids to flourish? Do you want communities worth living in and worth raising your children in? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a culture war. The more you fret over being a good, isolated individual, the easier you make it for others to run roughshod over civilization (or what is left of it).  

Today’s prescription is a simple one. Each morning, stare at yourself in the mirror and say: “Economic individualism is a distraction.” After you do that, repeat the words of Solon:

Some wicked men are rich, some good are poor,
We will not change our virtue for their store:
Virtue’s a thing that none can take away;
But money changes owners all the day.

Commit this verse to memory, and you won’t need Neil’s book.

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