I just come from the doctor, we made a 35 checkup, this is a prevention checkup for people older than 35 years. It’s free for me, the government pays. I wanted to have my body and my health status checked. I have a new born son and I think about diseases in a more sensitive way now. If there is something wrong coming up in me, it would be good to find it out now to have a chance to cure it, right? Fortunately they found nothing. If you have questions concerning health, who you gonna consult? The doctor, right? If you have trouble with your taxes, who you gonna ask? Your tax advisor, right? If your kids have trouble with learning, who you gonna ask for advice? Your teachers, right? I say: Wrong!
These people will possibly help you out on a short term perspective, experts are masters in repairing syndroms, but on a longterm view they cannot help you. Why? I will explain it later. But if it’s not the experts to ask, who else? I think I found out who the right persons are.
But first things first. Let me explain, why I think that experts like doctors, tax advisers, lawyers, architects and so on are overrated. Let’s have a look at the doctors. You think, they put you in the focus of their treatment? Well, if it is so, why doctors don’t want to have too many practices with the same expertise around? There is a law in most countries, which rules the opening of practices. I don’t know what it’s good for, it says, that it is not allowed to have too many dentists in one street or too many eye specialists in one corner. Look at Gera (a town in Thüringen). Can you imagine? 400 people are standing there in row to get a date with their eye specialist. The line goes along the sidewalk out to the street. An eye specialist is not a Primark Opening. What the hell is that? If you have a look at books like “Marketing in der Praxis” (Marketing in practice) published by Ratgeber Verlag, you will understand how many doctors see themselves today: There is no word about an ethical mission. They see themselves as enterpreneurs, their idols are automobile companies. It’s about to create a brand and about to sell services and see patients as customers. Nobody likes bad service, but what if the service is a hidden money maker? Have you ever heard of EVLT? This is a super cash cow for enterprenieurial doctors. It stands vor endovenous Lasertherapy and means you can use a laser machine to fight varicose veins (Krampfader). Normally in the hospitals they cure these things with a method called stripping. But stripping takes too long and hurts (and the price is fixed!). EVLT is a big business. 36 million adults suffer from varicose veins. That is every second (sic!) adult people. Surgeries on veins are one of the most common surgeries in Germany. It’ superfast, doesn’t hurt, a EVLT-practice can charge 1.300 Euro for a therapy (public health insurance doesn’t pay) and the best thing is: It cures the veins on a short term, but not on a longterm. It means, these patients – pardon me – customers will come again and again every 3 years. Marketers call this strategy “Customer relationship”. There are towns who turned out to be competence centers for EVLT – like places of pilgrimage. A new generation of pilgrims are born: the wellness customers. German medicine industry is powered by a big cramp.
Did you recently made a prevention checkup at your practice? Here is another bad news for people like me which I found out after I made the prevention checkup: There is no single prevention checkup, which really is worth the money, says a currently published study made by the danish Cochran Institute. Even the cancer prevention checkup based on mammographic methods is nothing but a money maker, my checkup doctor admitted honestly, when I asked him. Shocking, isn’t it? So, don’t ask your doctor, if you have health questions.
What about complicated stuff a normal man just can’t handle, like taxes? If I don’t ask tax advisors, who else? Well, of course my tax advisor knows more about taxes than me. But note: Tax advisors are the reason why there are tax havens in the world. By the way, what most people don’t know: Germany itself is in the Top Ten of the most attractive tax havens in the world. Come on, man. What’s wrong with paying taxes? Taxes have made it possible that I could go to school, visit youth centres, study architecture and have my first experience on the public channel (Offener Kanal) as a journalist. My father had a bypass surgery (and he didn’t pay a single Cent for that). Paying tax is honorful. There is nothing wrong about paying too much tax. (Of course the use of tax is something which should be improved, but the general idea is a good one: Everyone contribute to the community). Of course it is the tax experts who give advice to our company CEO’s of IKEA, PUMA and DEUTSCHE BANK, how to spend less money to the community in terms of taxes. How can a CEO know all these special detail knowledge about tricksing with taxes? It’s the experts who know how to do that. My tax advisor even recommends me not to be to honest. Otherwise I will “lose money to the taxman”. On a short term he is right, my year would be better financially, if I have more money left in my wallet. But on a global scale and on a longterm view this kind of thinking destroys the idea of a community. From this perspective a tax advisor can not help me to improve life with taxes. His education is not committed to good karma, but to good service. This means: cutting money from the community and bring money to the client (and to the tax advisor’s office also!).
What about teachers? You have children and you are worried, because they obviously don’t perform good enough to get a particular mark or degree? If you ask your teacher, he will give you a lot of advices, how to improve the performance of your child. But he will never tell you, that the best thing for children probably would be to take them out of school and let them learn in pressurefree environment (in Germany Unschooling or Homeschooling is forbidden). He will not tell you what a brain researcher called Professor Gerald Hüther found out: School kills creativity and so do teachers. School makes your child a disciplined obeyer, yes this is what school is perfect in. But it will kill the ability to think freely. So teachers can help you on a short term, improving marks of your child and so on. But on a longterm they can not help your child to really understand the world to prepare them to pose the right questions.
The same with architects, lawyers, journalists, therapists and so on. All experts can not help you on a long term. And here is the reason why:
Because their economical situation is dependent on the advice they give you. An architect will never earn money if he recommends you not to build the house. An EVLT-practice will not earn money if you choose the stripping-method. A teacher will lose his role, if you teach your children on your own. A tax advisor will not earn money, if you don’t want to make savings on tax tricks. And so on.
So who is the right person to ask?
It’s simple: Ask people who are independent on the field in which you have questions. Try this: Consult people who really don’t know nothing about the thing you want advice for. If you have questions about health, ask a musician. If you have questions concerning education, ask your favorite coffee barista. If you have questions concerning taxes, ask the homeless in the corner. If you have questions about building a house, ask children at the playground. These Non-experts probably won’t answer the initial question that you came up with, but I promise you: They will confront you with other questions, that might be more relevant for you and your life. And they will bring answers to questions that you didn’t dare to ask yet.