A post recommending reading The 48 Laws of Power and The Art of Seduction reminded me of my favorite chapter of another book by Robert Greene: The 50th Law. While the book is not his best work, it is worth reading. As u/Tengujin said "it's surprisingly good if you ignore the 50 cent dick riding."

Here is the introduction:

Making Everything Your Own: Self Reliance
When you work for others, you are at their mercy. They own your work; they own you. Your creative spirit is squashed. What keeps you in such positions is a fear of having to sink and swim on your own. Instead, you should have a greater fear of what will happen to you if you remain dependent on others for power. Your goal in every maneuver in life should be ownership: working the corner for yourself. When it's yours, it's yours to lose. You're more motivated, more creative, more alive. The ultimate power in life is to be completely self-reliant; completely yourself.

Absolute independence should be a long-term priority for all men, particularly financial independence. Working a 9-5 should be a means to an end. Many men spend their entire lives waking up too early, rushing to a job they hate but need and spending the day doing menial tasks with people they dislike or do not respect just to make a tiny percentage of the profits, while the boss man collects the real dollars. This goes on for a large percentage of their lives, then comes 'retirement' and shortly after, death.

"When you work around cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going to rub off on you?"

Have an escape plan. Do not fall into believing your time is worth x dollars an hour or x dollars a year and no more. Look for business opportunities, better yourself professionally and do what you need to do to rely on no one but yourself.

As Steve Pavlina wrote, "You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave."