[HN Gopher] How to get rich without being lucky (2019)
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How to get rich without being lucky (2019)
Author : Jaxtek
Score : 193 points
Date : 2021-05-22 12:00 UTC (11 hours ago)
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| madengr wrote:
| In engineering, its just as important to know what not to do. I
| am an expert at knowing how not to get rich.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Discussions like these seem to miss the critical difference
| between individually and socially rational incentives and
| behaviors. Surely, given you at least live in a place that is
| sufficiently secure and stable with liberal markets and access to
| capital, _anyone_ can get rich by following in the footsteps of
| the investor class. It is definitely not the case that _everyone_
| can get rich this way. If all 8 billion people on the planet did
| nothing but shuffle around paper ownership claims, there would be
| nothing to actually own. For an economy to produce anything at
| all, the vast majority of participants need to be on the ground
| making stuff, with only a tiny vanishing few shuffling paper at
| the top to decide who gets to own the inputs and outputs.
|
| Maybe we'll actually reach some future where all production and
| maintenance labor is fully automated and most participants in an
| economy won't be human and we can just ethically enslave them for
| the benefit of human owners, but we're nowhere near that point.
|
| I'm living right now in a hotbed of construction, a rapid growth
| metro, and I'm in the middle of it. Three lots I can see from my
| bedroom window are being leveled and turned into townhouses. That
| work is being done by people. They certainly have machine work
| multipliers. Nobody is carrying lumber and stone by hand from
| quarries to job site. Nobody is leveling the earth with shovels
| and trowels. But the bobcats and trucks are still operated by
| humans. Pipe is laid by humans. Walls are erected by humans. If
| all those people tried to do my job instead and became coders, or
| worse, tried to become investors, I and all the investors would
| be left with nowhere to live because no one would be building
| houses. We'd have no water or electricity if no one was laying
| the pipes and lines.
|
| At some point, we should realize this and attempt to have an
| economy that recognizes most people in the economy have to be
| doing basic labor for there to be an economy at all, and figure
| out a way to accomplish this without these people needing to live
| paycheck to paycheck with the looming threat of a medical
| emergency able to wipe them out permanently. We can't just tell
| them to all change their focus from doing work to building
| wealth, because if they actually all do that, there will no
| longer be any wealth.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| The author is mostly right, in this meta the best thing you can
| do is leverage as much as you can and pray that it doesn't
| burst at the wrong time. But that takes luck.
|
| Incentives drive behavior. If you perverse the incentives, the
| economy will follow.
|
| Why is our productivity growth at all time lows? Because our
| best are figuring out how to get people to click ads. Our best
| are trying to work out exactly which financial product will go
| up the most safely.
|
| When the increase of the money supply outpaces the increase in
| productivity, everyone mistakes leverage for genius.
| spfzero wrote:
| I think you've pointed out the fourth kind of luck, as
| described in the article. The people building the houses,
| driving the Bobcats, have a skill they've developed over time
| through their effort, that now affords them employment.
|
| If you know how to do something, and someone needs that,
| they're going to call you up and ask you if you'd like to do
| that thing for some amount of time for some amount of money. So
| that ability is a form of wealth.
|
| I don't think he's talking about everyone in the world becoming
| passive investors; kind of the opposite actually.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That literally is not what the author wrote though. He said
| that "if you're the best at something and you're connected
| with someone that needs that skill" then you'll get some
| wealth potentially. That's not the same as learning a trade
| that is easily accessible and attainable by anyone
| interested.
|
| What the author basically says in the article is "be part of
| the owner class generating wealth or you are a parasite".
| Talk about playing the very same status games he claims to
| eschew.
| eloff wrote:
| I feel like you didn't read or listen to the content. Naval is
| not suggesting you have to be an investor to get rich.
|
| But you do have to do something that gives you leverage, like
| starting a company. You're not going to get rich renting your
| time to an employer (unless you get lucky with stock options,
| or investing your income, but that's back to the point about
| leverage.)
| wslack wrote:
| I think the point of the original comment is that everyone
| can't follow that path, at least right now. Someone has to
| pick the oranges and work in the warehouse.
|
| So pretending that everyone in those jobs is making bad
| choices is wrong, because someone has to do those jobs.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >You're not going to get rich renting your time to an
| employer
|
| poor goldman sachs execs. how ripepd off they are to only be
| making millions/year when they could fire thier boss and
| start a subway franchise. poor a-list actors only making
| $20/million per film. Most small businesses,startups fail.
| Odds are a doctor making 7-figures will become more rich
| compared to an entrepreneur who dropped out of college.
| danenania wrote:
| Most people with a very high salary end up with an
| expensive lifestyle to match it. If they lose their job,
| they'll need to find another one before long. In this
| sense, they are not that different from someone making
| 1/10th the salary.
|
| The main difference between being rich and being wealthy is
| owning and controlling your time.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| > _Most people with a very high salary end up with an
| expensive lifestyle to match it._
|
| Evidence?
| paulpauper wrote:
| I hear this argument a lot. Why would lifestyles become
| more expensive if you become an exec but not a successful
| entrepreneur? Successful entrepreneurs like fancy, nice
| things too.
| danenania wrote:
| That's true, but the entrepreneur owns some piece of an
| income-generating asset. If the exec stops working, their
| income immediately goes to zero, and if they didn't save
| or get some equity, their wealth could be near zero too.
| The entrepreneur can stop working, but still be left with
| both income and a valuable asset (their piece of the
| business).
| medvezhenok wrote:
| The exec can invest his excess income into income-
| generating assets as well, with no problem. In addition,
| he can use his constant cash flow as collateral to take
| out a loan to invest in same income generating asset. And
| the variance for the exec is much lower than for the
| entrepreneur (failure rate much much higher for startup
| founders).
|
| So it's not apples and oranges.
| rabuse wrote:
| The article literally covers everything you stated.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Do doctors make millions annually?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I know quite a few that do. They make amazing silent real
| estate investment partners.
|
| Here's a thread on Bogleheads from yesterday from a young
| doc earning $1M+:
|
| https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=349431
|
| I think median is closer to $300k to $500k per year
| though.
| mehphp wrote:
| Why the pedantry? Those examples are exceedingly rare.
| paulpauper wrote:
| being a doctor is rare?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Being a doctor that makes 7 figures is rare, yes.
| mehphp wrote:
| Yes, becoming a wealthy doctor is rare.
|
| Again, the original point isn't that it's impossible to
| get rich by selling your time but that you'll most likely
| need some leverage (i.e. in the form of owning a
| business)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Becoming a doctor in the US is the most sure fire way to
| become wealthy across a whole occupation class. Less so
| today, as they are being squeezed, but they had a
| goldmine from 1980 to 2010s.
|
| If you're not becoming wealthy with these kinds of
| average incomes, you're doing something wrong:
|
| https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-compensation-
| overvie...
| ryan93 wrote:
| Most doctors retire with millions if they want.
| Pediatricians make more than most engineers
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Or an engineer at FAANG+M? There's literally millions of
| us.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Or an engineer at FAANG+M? There's literally millions
| of us
|
| "Software and Web Developers, Programmers, and Testers",
| total, in the US are under 2 million, and FAANG+M are a
| small fraction of that. FAANG+M is around 1 million total
| employees, but most of that is Amazon, non-software.
|
| The idea that there are millions of FAANGN+M software
| engineers is simply nowhere close to true.
| mehphp wrote:
| FAANG is engineers do great but not sure I'd classify the
| vast majority of them as rich...
| ghaff wrote:
| Do you like upper middle class better? No, they're not
| flying private jets but unless they're right out of
| school with a lot of debt they're probably pretty
| comfortable.
| obloid wrote:
| A doctor making 7 figures is rare. Source: I am a doctor
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > poor a-list actors
|
| A-list actors are pretty much defined by being the
| extremely narrow elite of the profession (entry into which
| elite requires work and talent and lots of luck) whose
| income is determined by their value licensing their
| personal brand to attach to things.
|
| > Odds are a doctor making 7-figures will become more rich
| compared to an entrepreneur who dropped out of college.
|
| Sure, but most doctors don't make 7 figures.
| Anesthesiologists (the highest paid medical occupation code
| in BLS data) have a national mean salary of $271K.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| So what does a world where no one is renting their time look
| like?
| paulpauper wrote:
| it is a meaningless/nonsensical statement
| foogazi wrote:
| > and figure out a way to accomplish this without these people
| needing to live paycheck to paycheck
|
| Why not let them figure it out themselves ?
|
| Also, no one "needs" to live paycheck to paycheck, just like no
| one needs to make bad investments, but it happens
|
| maybe someone googles "how to get rich" and finds Naval's
| advice. People can decide if it's worthwhile for them
| cortesoft wrote:
| No particular individual needs to to be those things, but the
| structure of our society requires SOME people to be those
| things.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| > Also, no one "needs" to live paycheck to paycheck
|
| Your disconnect from reality is showing.
| godfreyantonell wrote:
| I suppose in the same way as no one "needs to" live.
| qzw wrote:
| > Maybe we'll actually reach some future where all production
| and maintenance labor is fully automated and most participants
| in an economy won't be human and we can just ethically enslave
| them for the benefit of human owners, but we're nowhere near
| that point.
|
| It's equally likely that in such a future most people will be
| on some version of UBI that allows them to get by, but wealth,
| in whatever form it takes, will still be limited to a
| relatively small subset of people. There's no reason to believe
| that the robots/AGI/whatever means of production will naturally
| be owned collectively rather than privately. I hope the future
| turns out better, but there seems to be something in human
| nature that makes inequity tend to stick around.
| ben_w wrote:
| > There's no reason to believe that the robots/AGI/whatever
| means of production will naturally be owned collectively
| rather than privately.
|
| I think that depends on the tech and what it can do. If we
| get a general purpose construction robot that can also make
| copies of itself -- be that a 3D printer with some manual
| assembly required once the parts come out, or a genetically
| engineered programmable moss, or bioprinted fairy drones with
| microchips for brains -- anything like that has close to no
| marginal cost to give to everyone rather than just to the
| rich.
|
| If we never get von Neumann tech? Then sure, I agree with
| you.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Uhh... You had me at "bioprinted fairy drones" Please give
| a website, blog or book recommendation so I can become your
| humble disciple.
| ben_w wrote:
| Thanks for the vote of confidence! It inspired me to go
| and write a blog post for this: https://kitsunesoftware.w
| ordpress.com/2021/05/22/bioprinted-...
| swader999 wrote:
| The navies zero point energy patents perhaps. How else
| would they get those triangles in the skies?
| pydry wrote:
| If de-globalization continues at its current pace, we'll
| probably find that a lot _more_ labor is required in the
| future.
|
| A lot of what we imagine to be automated work is actually
| just work outsourced to countries with cheaper labor and a
| container port. In the event that global supply chains
| becomes unreliable, a wave of on-shoring will follow.
| bitwize wrote:
| Making money is like a clicker game, such as Cookie Clicker. If
| you are earning a wage at a job, you're still in the boring part
| of the game where you click to get cookies. Wealthy people are
| playing the metagame, buying the grandmas and factories and space
| vortexes that automatically generate cookies. And that's when the
| game gets _fun_.
|
| I think our concept of "greed" is a bit misplaced. Greed is not
| about having more money just to have it. If you or I had as much
| money as Bill Gates or Donald Trump, we wouldn't know what to do
| with the huge amount left over after all our needs and desires
| are met. It's about being able to buy the next thing that
| automatically clicks for cookies, so that they can continue
| making cookies (money) faster. Increasing the rate of cookie
| generation means they're winning at the game. It's their hobby,
| it's their passion.
| samatman wrote:
| It isn't at all true that hunter-gatherers had only status and
| not wealth.
|
| The Native American tribes of eastern North America used wampum,
| small, regular beads made from a few specific shells, as a store
| of value and medium of exchange.
|
| Yes, they couldn't own that much more than they could carry. Some
| of these peoples did farm, some didn't, but all of them relied on
| hunting or fishing, and most had to move around at least a couple
| times a year.
|
| But a wealthy Iroquois could wear enough wealth to buy many times
| what he could carry in meat, tools, furs, and anything else which
| other people could make available.
|
| Shell money isn't limited to the Native Americans, either, it's
| been found in paleolithic grave goods and was quite widespread
| anywhere Europeans encountered hunter-gatherers.
| anotheryou wrote:
| I'd really like to read the continuation of this thought
| experiment. Which skills, if any industry knowledge is part of
| it, what the first steps would be, how to balance financial
| security and entrepreneurship ect.
|
| "I like to think that if I lost all my money and if you drop me
| on a random street in any English-speaking country, within 5, 10
| years I'd be wealthy again. Because it's a skill set that I've
| developed and I think anyone can develop."
| gspr wrote:
| How about you are dropped onto one of those streets, with your
| skillset, but: You're a person of color. Perhaps with no formal
| education to get someone to even consider your skills. Maybe
| you're past your prime age-wise too. And look it. Perhaps you
| develop an untreated health issue after being dropped on those
| streets.
|
| Now try.
| [deleted]
| milansm wrote:
| You realize that Naval is a person of color?
| legulere wrote:
| > Wealth is the thing you want. Wealth is assets that earn while
| you sleep; it's the factory of robots cranking out things. Wealth
| is the computer program running at night that's serving other
| customers.
|
| In reality you still need people to earn money. Wealth really is
| the control over the limited means of production which allow you
| to gain out of the work of others.
|
| There are also positive sides to it though: Having other people
| earn money for you is a pretty high incentive for bringing into
| the world new means of production
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| The idea that there's no luck involved is pretty dumb.
| pototo666 wrote:
| He actually talks about four kinds of luck. Have you read it?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Especially because the author has said in other instances that
| he got lucky to get accepted to Stuyvesant high school in NYC,
| which is basically the premiere public school, and that opened
| up huge pathways for him to later get into an ivy league, and
| to get into tech investing. Where would he be in life if the
| coinflip in the Stuy admission office went the other way and he
| ended up going to a more normal public school and some other 14
| year old got accepted in his stead?
|
| Also, he hasn't talked much about his family - except that they
| were "immigrants and nobodies". But his mom did emigrate from
| India to NYC with two children, which isn't exactly common. I
| suspect, perhaps, his family is a little better connected, or a
| little better off financially, than he has let on. But it would
| be impossible to get the truth at this point unless it came
| from an outside source because Naval is going big on narrative
| building his own life.
| losvedir wrote:
| > he got lucky to get accepted to Stuyvesant high school in
| NYC ... Where would he be in life if the coinflip in the Stuy
| admission office went the other way and he ended up going to
| a more normal public school
|
| I'm pretty sure "got lucky" here is kind of a humble brag,
| like "I'm so lucky to be smart". Stuyvesant admissions are
| straightforwardly and deterministically based on a test, with
| spots going to the highest scores. There's no admissions
| officers considering extracurriculars, or interview or
| anything like that.
| redisman wrote:
| Just the fact that his mom moved from India to NYC is a giant
| multiplier on ones chance of financial success. Some might
| even call that.. luck?
| snickersnee11 wrote:
| Well, we're assume there's a certain path you can take to
| maximize your chances, it will be too pessimistic to always
| take bad luck in account.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| There's most definitely luck involved, but a huge part of it is
| being prepared to capitalize on those lucky opportunities. Are
| you ready when the bell rings?
| moate wrote:
| And if the bell never rings?
| sergiotapia wrote:
| It always rings. The vast majority of people never
| volunteer, never want to be visible, never want to put in
| the work. The odds are in your favor that the bell will
| ring for you, just by reading this forum you probably read
| other interesting things. Most people just watch TV, it's
| crazy but it's true.
| danenania wrote:
| That's true, but it's just as dumb to say that success is all
| or mostly luck.
|
| If one person struggles for years, trying and failing again and
| again before finding success, and another person spends all
| that time watching tv and playing video games, is the
| difference in outcome only due to luck?
| ne0flex wrote:
| Depends on your definition of luck. Some people define luck has
| having the skill to take advantage of opportunities you come
| across. Of course, the skill thresholds to take care of
| opportunities varies significantly case by case.
| mgh2 wrote:
| "Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they
| create wealth, but because they create character." - Calvin
| Coolidge
|
| I think our generation is forgetting some fundamentals: money at
| the expense of anything else. The problem with this approach, is
| not only that it destroys character in the individual, but that
| it also scales externalities to the rest of society.
|
| Part of this narrative is sold by startup culture and technocrats
| preaching to "change the world", while in reality the majority is
| just chasing quick money. From FAANGs to VCs, they control the
| media that convince young people to do the same: Robinhood,
| GameStop, cryptocurrencies are just reflections of this epidemic.
|
| This article is as ignorant as it gets as it refers to a
| misquoted saying "money is the root of all evil". The real quote
| is "the LOVE of money is the root of all evil" (aka. GREED)
|
| "The vaunted American dream, the idea that life will get better,
| that progress is inevitable if we obey the rules and work hard,
| that material prosperity is assured, has been replaced by a hard
| and bitter truth. The American dream, we now know, is a lie. We
| will all be sacrificed. The virus of corporate abuse - the
| perverted belief that only corporate profit matters - has spread
| to outsource our jobs, cut the budgets of our schools, close our
| libraries, and plague our communities with foreclosures and
| unemployment." - Chris Hedges
|
| Americans are forgetting their values
| https://m-g-h.medium.com/why-we-are-dispensable-7a577eba4f3e
| fairity wrote:
| You do a great job summarizing the problems that arise from
| greed, but I wonder if you recognize that there are
| countervailing benefits.
|
| A lot of progress and innovation has been made by greedy
| individuals. I think much of this progress would be lost had
| they adopted more wholesome values, because greed is a superior
| motivator.
|
| Greed is a superior motivator because it has no bounds. When
| someone is obsessed with accumulating wealth, it tends to be a
| never-ending pursuit. No matter how much wealth they
| accumulate, they're left wanting more. This is in stark
| contrast to more wholesome values, which tend to be more easily
| satiated.
|
| I think another way to frame this is: the problem is not greed
| itself. Rather, the problem is that our current system of
| harnessing greed fails at controlling negative externalities.
| Without these negative externalities, greed would be a positive
| force.
| c22 wrote:
| It doesn't make any sense to talk about "losing" progress.
| Either you're progressing or you're not. What you're
| potentially losing here is "speed of progress" which may or
| may not turn out to be beneficial to this planet's
| inhabitants over the long run.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| I think you are hanging to the literal meaning of the
| expression they used instead of the metaphorical (aka the
| progress wouldn't have been achieved).
|
| As a side note:
|
| >It doesn't make any sense to talk about "losing" progress.
|
| Haven't you (or someone you know) ever lost progress
| because of a power failure? ;)
| mgh2 wrote:
| For who you may ask? Only to the elite few, the rest are left
| with scraps.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > because greed is a superior motivator.
|
| is it?
|
| and even if it was, is it worth the (personal, familial,
| societal, environmental) consequences?
| gary_0 wrote:
| There are definitely counter-examples. Linux wasn't started
| because Torvalds thought it would get him rich quick.
| Rowling didn't write the first Harry Potter thinking it
| would eventually earn billions. Plenty of famous artists,
| inventors, and scientists died poor, only receiving
| posthumous recognition. Key vaccine researchers were
| resigned to struggling in less-profitable sectors of
| biotech until 2020 happened.[0][1]
|
| People in a great many fields put in huge amounts of effort
| for very little financial reward (and even virtually
| guaranteed hardship), and sometimes that results in huge
| benefits for the world.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125003
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronav
| irus-...
| mettamage wrote:
| Feynman is a fun one. Einstein obviously. I like strogatz
| and what he did with graph theory.
| jollybean wrote:
| "When someone is obsessed with accumulating wealth, it tends
| to be a never-ending pursuit. "
|
| _Wealth creation is not value creation_.
|
| Just because you put money in your account, does not mean you
| 'grew the pie' - in fact - you can generate a lot of wealth
| individually, while _shrinking_ the overall pie.
|
| For example, some kinds of resource extraction do more
| environmental damage than the profits generated.
|
| 'Good Capitalism' creates a ton of value for society, and
| then captures some of those surpluses.
|
| 'Negative Capitalism' just grabs surpluses by whatever means:
| leverage, legalities, etc..
|
| The problem is we generally don't have a language for
| distinguishing between the two.
|
| As of today, I believe everything related to blockchain is
| 'bad capitalism' - in that, the externalities and effort are
| not worth the benefits (though that could change).
|
| My mother was complaining yesterday about the volume of ads
| on Facebook - while I think ads are ok, when people are
| locked in and deluged, its starts to corrode the net value of
| a situation.
|
| 'The Web' and 'Google' probably create a lot of value.
|
| 'Facebook' and 'Blockchain' ... more dubious.
|
| Because of the ridiculous amount of money available to be
| made in net-zero games, even respectable VC's have to pay
| attention.
|
| It definitely bothers me that there is no language of
| distinction in the SV.
|
| Finally, yes, greed is a quixotic motivator, and sometimes it
| actually does help.
| slg wrote:
| >Greed is a superior motivator because it has no bounds. When
| someone is obsessed with accumulating wealth, it tends to be
| a never-ending pursuit. No matter how much wealth they
| accumulate, they're left wanting more. This is in stark
| contrast to more wholesome values, which tend to be more
| easily satiated.
|
| I'm not sure why you are stating this like it is a universal
| fact. Plenty of people reach a level of wealth in which their
| desire for more is satiated and many people have a need to do
| good that is never fully satisfied. It all depends on the
| person.
| fairity wrote:
| > It all depends on the person.
|
| Agreed. I'm speaking in generalities to make the point
| that, on average, greed is a superior motivating force. At
| least from personal experience, I've found far more people
| foregoing personal health and relationships for the sake of
| wealth accumulation than societal contribution. Even among
| those that eventually satiate their desire for wealth, it's
| mostly because their values have shifted (not because their
| ultimate value remains wealth accumulation and now they
| have enough).
| atlgator wrote:
| You just matched one viewpoint with an opposing one. At
| least the OP's opinion has some empirical evidence in the
| form of Gates, Jobs, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and so on.
| All greedy robber barons of their time that made profound
| impacts on industry and society while treating their
| employees like grist for the mill.
| Retric wrote:
| Gates stopped and started spending his money. If the
| wealthiest person in the world eventually gives up that
| suggests greed is bound, it's simply high enough in many
| people that they never realize that goal.
|
| Further the institution of retirement suggests greed
| isn't an unlimited motivator for most people.
| robocat wrote:
| Is Gates actually spending it faster than his equity is
| rising in value?
| mettamage wrote:
| Yep, see FIRE and it's sibling acronyms.
| mettamage wrote:
| Self determination theory is the opposite. And has a lot
| of empirical evidence.
|
| Also check the overjustification effect to see how
| extrinsic motivation destroys any motivation.
|
| Imo intrinsic > extrinsic
|
| Any time any day.
|
| Want examples? Look at passionate people. Look at
| academia. They're not a handful if people but tons of
| them that did good work that helped innovation.
| robocat wrote:
| As GP said in your quote "When someone is obsessed...".
|
| Disclaimer: not saying I agree with GP.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The free market harnesses greed to make everyone else better
| off. We live in a golden age, all the result of greed.
|
| No other economic system has come close to that.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The vast number of homeless in all major cities would
| disagree. Same with the countless whose livelihoods are being
| ruined by the unfolding climate catastrophe. Not to mention
| the majority of humans being kept poor for the profit of a
| few.
|
| No economic system other than capitalism has come close to so
| much suffering and death.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > No economic system other than capitalism has come close
| to so much suffering and death.
|
| See "The Black Book of Communism".
| https://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-
| Repressio...
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Which counts invading Nazis and babies that might have
| been born. It's widely panned by historians and even
| several of the authors admitted they made bits up.
|
| Regardless, capitalism's death toll far exceeds 100
| million, it achieves that much in a few years. The
| carnage is truly difficult to imagine, especially in the
| comfort such carnage buys for the imperialist countries.
| rzmnzm wrote:
| Nothing in "capitalism" watches the scale of stalin's
| purges and dead camps. Or Mao's They followed an
| impossible dream straight into hell.
| halsom wrote:
| This book has been proven a fraud by historians around
| the world time and time again, including by many leading
| historians in the United States. It's fraudulence, and
| the support and proliferation of it by US state officials
| and US academies is sheer embarrassment. The fact that
| anyone still has the nerve to so much as imply that this
| is a worthwhile source of information should serve as a
| stain on the prevailing liberalism of our times.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Cites, please.
|
| Are you claiming that the famines in the USSR and the
| gulags, for example, didn't happen? How about Pol Pot's
| massacres?
|
| I'm curious as to your explanation for why communist
| countries built walls to keep people in, and the US
| builds walls to keep people out? Can you point out
| famines and gulags in the US?
|
| I toured East Berlin in 1969. I went through the wall.
| East Berlin looked like a drab prison camp compared to
| West Berlin. You can believe whatever you like, but I've
| seen it with my own eyes.
|
| I think the Berliners were a little too eager to tear
| down that wall, though I totally understand why. Should
| have left more of it up to inform later revisionists.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The GDR was poor because it was small, didn't start out
| with much industry, had a hostile enclave forced on half
| its capital, paid reparations, competed with the US-
| funded western part and was under constant attack from
| it.
|
| Don't confuse the effects of your country's imperialism
| with efforts to resist it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They were poor because they spent a large fraction of
| their GDP on the Wall.
|
| I've heard the claim before that the Wall was built to
| keep Westerners out. But, as I said, I've visited the
| Wall in 1969. It was very clearly designed to keep people
| in, not out. The defenses _pointed East_. It was a
| layered defense, with the weakest parts easternmost and
| the deadliest parts adjacent to the Wall itself. Exactly
| what would be built to defend from attack _from the
| East_. You 'll see the same setup in fortifications from
| castles (layers pointing outwards) to prisons (layers
| pointing inwards).
|
| For another example, West Berlin helped out people who
| wanted to invade East Berlin by building platforms so one
| could look over the Wall (as myself and lots of tourists
| did). Nobody hopped over, though, to invade the East. But
| many got shot trying to go the other way, there's a
| museum there documenting it.
|
| BTW, it was the East that blockaded West Berlin,
| attempting to starve the city into submission, not the
| other way around.
| acituan wrote:
| > I think our generation is forgetting some fundamentals: money
| at the expense of anything else.
|
| This makes it sound like it is a collection of individual
| failings that lead to market and growth remaining as the only
| normativities today.
|
| It is the other way around; since religion and nation are left
| for dead after modernism, there is no glue layer that brings
| values together. People are not likely to be virtuous in
| isolation because in absence of coordinating factors, game
| theoretic advantage is on the one who cheats, at least in the
| short run. If there is no ambient sense of fair play, character
| doesn't pay the bills.
|
| New generations are increasingly feeling being cheated out of a
| life preceding generations had had. There is only one button
| available to them and that is "more work, more growth, more
| hype".
|
| The problem with the article's premise is in its framing; why
| does one feel that they need to be _rich_ to feel secure to
| begin with? What anxiety locks us up on focusing on that goal?
| What buttons we could _viably_ add back to the game?
| redisman wrote:
| That dream was scrapped for parts by Reagan et al. It's
| ridiculous to blame the millennials- the first generation
| (ever?) in the US to be worse off than their predecessors
| economically.
| mgh2 wrote:
| I agree, but is emulating the errors of our parents that
| corroded society the best solution?
| davesque wrote:
| But our "parents" are still largely in control? Wouldn't
| passing economic reforms probably be easier without a bunch
| of deluded boomers and gen Xers in Congress?
| mgh2 wrote:
| As hard as it is to believe, the gov. is on our side.
| They are the last resort against greed. Maybe consider
| working for them to change the rules from the inside.
| humanrebar wrote:
| Show me a government that solved the whole greed problem.
| Zhenya wrote:
| How do you square that people are greedy, but a group of
| people in power, with the threat of violence, is not.
| Balgair wrote:
| > They are the last resort against greed.
|
| Nit: In a democracy, _you_ are the government. We all
| are. There is no 'them'. _They_ are _us_.
|
| I know, I know. What I just typed was naive pedantic
| droll.
|
| But if you really do believe it, then it does become
| true, kinda. It takes work, a lot of work, very hard
| work. But votes and service to the community really
| really do matter.
| taneq wrote:
| Nit^2: You aren't in a democracy.
| coldelectrons wrote:
| Nit^3: Quit adversarially picking nits and do your part
| with societal knolling.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _it also scales externalities_
|
| I knew when I saw "at scale" in call-for-proposals issued by
| federal granting agencies that it was soon to lose all meaning,
| and I think this is about the point at which it's done that.
| imheretolearn wrote:
| >> I think our generation is forgetting some fundamentals:
| money at the expense of anything else.
|
| This is a very broad statement and does _not_ apply equally to
| everyone. It fits well for someone belonging from a well off
| family /society vs someone struggling to survive.
| roughly wrote:
| I don't think the critique here is against those struggling
| to survive, and I don't think you're doing those folks any
| favors by cutting off conversations about the overfixation on
| money in American society.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| The full verse: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds
| of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered
| away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." -1
| Timothy 6:10 (ESV)
| [deleted]
| 1270018080 wrote:
| The YC bubble might be addicted to greed, but I don't think the
| youngest generations desire money more than anything else. Most
| don't even have the opportunity to desire money.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/03/precariou...
|
| Here's the classic chart that has been thrown around.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Greed is not new. You assume people are greedier now because
| you are alive now.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| I think maybe the point of the comment is that there were
| countervailing forces in society at one point, e.g. the
| dictates of certain religions. That aspect of society is
| substantially weakened in our time (ethical codes of living
| are broadly considered antiquated and ridiculous in modern
| societies), so the focus on greed or greed-adjacent
| motivations are less restrained. Whether that is a Good Thing
| (tm) is up for debate, but it seems like a reasonable
| statement to me.
| truth_ wrote:
| > there were countervailing forces in society at one point,
| e.g. the dictates of certain religions.
|
| Only because they just wanted the money for themselves.
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| This is sort of the obvious "opiate of the masses"
| counter, which I think is a reasonable consideration.
| jollybean wrote:
| Greed is not new, but the mechanics of society are completely
| different now than 100 years ago.
|
| For common people only 2 generations ago, the only way to
| 'make money' was to do actual work, something that probably
| created some kind of net value. Surpluses were shared
| differently, but work was done.
|
| The opportunities to hustle and grab value while creating
| little for society is available to the common person today.
|
| The economics have changed quite dramatically and that does
| factor into the equation.
| enriquto wrote:
| fuck being rich. I just want to be able to afford a small house
| to live with my family. If I saved 100% of my salary for a decade
| I still would't be able to afford half of it.
| amelius wrote:
| You don't work in IT, I suppose?
| enriquto wrote:
| I guess I do, but in academia (and in Europe). Is it
| different in the U.S.? How many years worth of a professor
| salary do you need to buy a house in a major city?
| ericmay wrote:
| It really depends on the city, but I'd say in most major
| metro areas in the U.S. average home price is going to be
| $300,000 or so.
| edoceo wrote:
| Zillow says Seattle is over $800,000.
|
| Can't find salary info for UW (the big university).
|
| Tech-folk making $150,000+
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Can't find salary info for UW (the big university).
|
| In most states the salaries of state employees (at least
| over a certain amount) are available. Since UW is a
| public school you should be able to find them here:
| http://fiscal.wa.gov/salaries.aspx
|
| Filtering by UW employees I can see at least one
| professor making $627k in 2019, and I imagine there are
| lower tier professors making a fraction of that (some
| associate professors making < $100k).
| gnicholas wrote:
| Universities in expensive cities tend to have housing-
| specific perks because otherwise recruiting/retention
| would be very difficult. One school we considered allows
| faculty to forego $30k/yr in salary in exchange for a
| beautiful home they can live in as long as they teach
| there. The school will customize the home to the
| professor's liking, perform all maintenance (down to the
| lightbulbs), and pay all property taxes.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Depends on the price of the _house in a major European
| city_ (which could be pretty high, I imagine).
| jl2718 wrote:
| This is near to his point. Salary is trading 'wealth' for
| 'money'. You could literally build that house to achieve
| 'wealth' faster than you can earn it by saving money from
| salary.
|
| This essay helped me understand how I made this mistake over
| well more than that decade you fear. The 80-90% saved from two
| decades of engineering salary did absolutely nothing to get me
| closer to debt-free housing security. Money is amazing when you
| see it for the first time, but it ends up being worthless.
| Investments too - risk of unmitigated loss for an individual
| investor is structurally greater than the potential for post-
| tax gain.
|
| So he's saying to build wealth, not money, and definitely avoid
| status games. (But we're here posting, so, failing that last
| one spectacularly.)
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Wait, so you're saying to build a house rather than buy it
| because it's cheaper? I think the overwhelming amount of
| costs of a house is the actual land it's on. You can't build
| land.
| jl2718 wrote:
| You can build a house anywhere if you don't need a salary
| tied to an expensive area.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Yeah the dream of remote. I sometimes think of getting a
| remote job and leaving for a cheap area but things like
| family and friends really tie me down here. It would
| really suck to see my parents only once or twice a year
| knowing that there's maybe 20 years or so left with them.
| quantumofalpha wrote:
| Depends on location and probably not true in most of the
| world by area. There's lots of land in the world you can
| have for cheap. Or even free, e.g. Russia is happy to hand
| out 1ha in the far east to any citizen with only one string
| attached - go and do something with it within 5 years, then
| it's yours. Somehow, not many takers.
| eloff wrote:
| I'd need a minimum 700,000 to buy a lot or a condemned
| teardown home on a lot here in Vancouver, BC. Actually
| that's not Vancouver, that would be an hour away in Maple
| Ridge or Langley. I'm ok with building (or subcontracting
| the building of) my own home - but I still can't afford the
| lot to even start the process.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" I just want to be able to afford a small house to live with
| my family. If I saved 100% of my salary for a decade I still
| would't be able to afford half of it."_
|
| In what country and what area?
|
| There are places which will pay _you_ to move in, and living
| there is free.
|
| They might not be places you want to live, especially not with
| a family, but they exist
|
| Then there are places that are super cheap by developed-nation
| standards.. like Eastern/Central Europe, parts of South/Central
| America, Asia, Africa... pretty much anywhere.
|
| Even in the US, if you live far enough from a metropolitan area
| or in some less desirable locations you can find really cheap
| homes, or cheap land on which you can plop down a trailer or a
| kit-home, or build your own out of cheap alternative materials.
|
| Again, you might not want to live in such places for a variety
| of reasons.. but they're affordable.
| nodesocket wrote:
| Have you thought about a career change? You mentioned below you
| are a professor, a nobel endeavor but obviously not a very
| lucrative one (financially). Perhaps there is another career
| you can also love which pays you more and open doors of
| freedom.
| enriquto wrote:
| I see this problem as a societal, not a personal failure.
| Minimum wage should be enough to live comfortably, but the
| housing market is bonkers.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| You can (rightfully) blame external sources, but doing so
| isn't going to make any difference in your experience of
| life. If your desire is to own a house, there are actions
| you can do to get there. Is it fair? No, but neither is
| life.
| csunbird wrote:
| That is the main point. Why is life not fair and why do
| we not try to do things to make it fairer? We all try to
| unbalance the system by trying to get more money or more
| power, instead of trying to work together and make it
| fair for everyone.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Because we are humans, and the factors that drive humans
| who are capable of making widespread change that would
| make things fair steer them towards wealth and power
| instead. That's just reality.
| [deleted]
| dinkleberg wrote:
| You can help yourself and also help others. I can say
| with certainty that debating these points on HN isn't
| going to have _any_ impact on the fairness of life.
| Committing to action is an admirable thing, idle words
| bemoaning the unfairness of life doesn 't help anyone.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Why exclude getting rich as a way to become able to afford?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Seems like the usual banal self affirmation post.
|
| No luck? The author admits themselves that they needed an able
| body and a good education, for example. Privilege and luck is
| simply assumed and ignored. Just another example of survivor bias
| looking backward and saying "I made it with no luck at all!"
|
| Its not a real introspection despite the spilled ink.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >But the reality is everyone can be rich. We can see that by
| seeing, that in the First World, everyone is basically richer
| than almost anyone who was alive 200 years ago.
|
| >200 years ago nobody had antibiotics. Nobody had cars. Nobody
| had electricity. Nobody had the iPhone. All of these things are
| inventions that have made us wealthier as a species.
|
| >Today, I would rather be a poor person in a First World country,
| than be a rich person in Louis the XIV's France. I'd rather be a
| poor person today than aristocrat back then. That's because of
| wealth creation.
|
| Ppl keep making this argument,and even though it is not wrong,
| rhetorically it is unpersuasive. People see the huge hospital
| bill, having to negotiate with insurers, tuition going up, bills
| unpaid, unrest and anger online and in poltics, etc. They feel
| like things are getting worse on a relative basis even if the
| iphone is more 10000x more advanced than a supercomputer 60 years
| ago.
|
| You cannot make such an assumption because the subjective 'you'
| cannot experience both at once or compare and contrast the two.
| Both have advantages and disadvantages: Being a king means more
| status but also possibly dying of an infection and only having 0g
| wireless. Higher social status means generally an improved well-
| being.
| teachingassist wrote:
| > Today, I would rather be a poor person in a First World
| country, than be a rich person in Louis the XIV's France. I'd
| rather be a poor person today than aristocrat back then.
|
| A rich person also had access to _near-unlimited amounts of
| human labour_. Cleaning your house, cooking your meals,
| tailoring your clothes, nursing your children.
|
| There is a limit to how much that has been replaced by
| technology.
|
| An equivalent question is: Would you give up being a rich
| person in 2021, to become a poor person in 2200?
| webmaven wrote:
| _> An equivalent question is: Would you give up being a rich
| person in 2021, to become a poor person in 2200?_
|
| That's only an equivalent question if it is being asked _in
| 2200_.
|
| From a 2021 vantage point, there are too many unknowns, as
| many of the plausible scenarios for 2200 could be summed up
| as variants of a Grim Meathook Future, even _without_
| considering extreme scenarios like nuclear winter, asteroid
| strikes, high mortality pandemics, grey goo, Curious Yellow,
| alien invasions, robot uprisings, and so on.
|
| Sticking just to business-as-usual extrapolation, life could
| get very unpleasant for the poor within the next 80 years (or
| shortly thereafter: 2200 could be pretty decent but if things
| go to hell in 2202, you've still lost the gamble).
| loxs wrote:
| Also being able to procreate and reliably raise children
| (also with physical help from servants) is probably a bigger
| wealth enhancer, especially over generations.
|
| In our modern world, being poor means you are going to either
| not procreate, or suffer while doing so. An iPhone does not
| cure that.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| MrPowers wrote:
| The book The Millionaire Next Door provided data to support "Seek
| wealth, not money or status".
|
| The book was written by finance professors who examined the
| characteristics of actual millionaires. They found a lot of
| people who appeared to be millionaires did not actually have a
| net worth over a million dollars.
|
| High status professional are expected to drive nice cars and live
| in a big house. It's harder to be a millionaire if you're
| spending a lot of money.
|
| The authors were surprised to find that a lot of the Americans
| with a net worth over a million did not fit any of the
| "millionaire stereotypes" at all. They drive an old pickup truck
| and drink Bud Light.
|
| I like the Tweet thread, but prefer the Millionaire Next Door
| cause it's backed up by actual data. It also seems like the Tweet
| thread is focused on advice that'll get you a net worth in the
| top 0.1%. The central premise of the Millionaire Next Door is a
| lot of people have "regular jobs" and get rich (depending on your
| definition of rich). See the janitor that amassed an $8 million
| dollar fortune: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/29/janitor-secretly-
| amassed-an-...
| paulpauper wrote:
| >High status professional are expected to drive nice cars and
| live in a big house. It's harder to be a millionaire if you're
| spending a lot of money.
|
| houses and cars are assets. god why do people believe this crud
| masquerading as science
|
| >I like the Tweet thread, but prefer the Millionaire Next Door
| cause it's backed up by actual data. It also seems like the
| Tweet thread is focused on advice that'll get you a net worth
| in the top 0.1%. The central premise of the Millionaire Next
| Door is a lot of people have "regular jobs" and get rich
| (depending on your definition of rich). See the janitor that
| amassed an $8 million dollar fortune:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/29/janitor-secretly-amassed-an-...
|
| The only reason why the janitor story is newsworthy is because
| of how exceedingly rare it is, not because this is something
| that can be reproduced. no one publishes stories about lawyers,
| execs, doctors, coders, bankers, etc. donating millions. You
| have to donate tens of millions for Harvard to care.
| dixie_land wrote:
| personally I do not count my primary residence or my daily
| truck assets even though they're paid off.
|
| the reason being if I lose them I can't maintain my current
| quality of life. so the rising valuation of housing is a net
| negative, just more tax revenue for the state, doesn't do me
| any favor
| rrdharan wrote:
| Cars are depreciating assets.
| paulpauper wrote:
| right, but they are assets nonetheless, which is why police
| repossess them for asset forfeitures, and some cars even
| gain value by becoming collectible
| mNovak wrote:
| Sure, but I think the point here is that given the option
| to maximize investment in a depreciating asset (buy fancy
| car) or minimize that investment (buy an inexpensive car)
| and invest the difference elsewhere, it's better to do
| the latter.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > some cars even gain value by becoming collectible
|
| I've run some figures. Almost none pay back their
| storage, maintenance, and tax costs, let alone the
| opportunity cost of tying up the money.
|
| I remember on an episode of "Antiques Roadshow" where
| some guy had a couple Leica's his father bought in the
| 1960s. They were mint, with all manuals, receipts, etc.
| The amount they were worth was pretty large, and the guy
| was ecstatic that he'd hit the jackpot.
|
| The trouble was, if his father had put the same money
| into the S&P500, a completely boring investment, it'd be
| worth more today than those cameras.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Houses and cars are assets, but the larger the house the
| larger the non value generating expenditures such as taxes
| and maintenance too.
|
| Cars are also assets that do not appreciate as a general
| rule.
| [deleted]
| ycombinete wrote:
| Only if you own them, right? Otherwise they are just debt you
| owe a bank.
| swimfar wrote:
| >houses and cars are assets.
|
| I would guess that the majority of people do not own their
| house outright. Just because you have a mortgage on a one
| million dollar house, doesn't mean you have one million
| dollars worth of wealth in your house.
| sombremesa wrote:
| Your mortgage is itself an asset. It's one of the best
| hedges against inflation - as long as you don't fall into
| the refi trap.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| Only if the interest rate is fixed, right? Is it common
| for mortgage interest rates in the USA to be fixed at a
| set percentage for the life of the loan?
| dlp211 wrote:
| Yes it is.
| [deleted]
| MrPowers wrote:
| Do you have any resources or particular qualms with Thomas
| Stanley's research techniques? To me, it seemed like he was
| drawing conclusions based on data. Interested in why you
| think it was "crud masquerading as science".
| aidenn0 wrote:
| A new car loses a significant amount of value as soon as you
| drive it off the lot. If you finance it or lease it, then you
| don't even own the asset.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| This isn't really true anymore. I just sold a 2 year old
| car with 25k miles on it for just 10% less than I
| originally paid. Prior to that I sold a 1 year old car with
| 18k miles on it for 1% less than I paid. You can also lease
| new cars for a very low fixed rate which includes all
| maintenance, insurance, etc. There is a value in having a
| safe, new, reliable car.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Used cars are in high demand now because of covid-related
| shortages.
| ghaff wrote:
| The last time I looked at used vehicle prices, they
| didn't seem like great deals. Also, I think with modern
| cars, the reality is that you can get the latest and
| greatest and, after 10+ years, they're still pretty
| darned reliable. The trick, especially in snow country,
| is to get rid of them before rust-related issues, among
| other things, become a problem. I have a 10 year old
| vehicle and will probably think about replacing over the
| next few years.
| neogodless wrote:
| The chip shortage has put a dent in new car supply,
| driving prices up and having ripple effects on the used
| car market. It's an unusual time and shouldn't be thought
| of as the new normal.
|
| Anecdotally my used car gained 25% in value over the last
| six months. But if I sold it and still want something to
| drive, I'm on the hook to buy a replacement that is also
| priced higher than normal.
| praptak wrote:
| "houses and cars are assets"
|
| Technically. What matters is that the house you live in and
| the car you drive are _not investments_. Choosing expensive
| ones is a bad decision if you want to accumulate wealth.
|
| At best it's an opportunity cost - you are tying up money
| which could become an investment. Practically it's much worse
| - a car is practically guaranteed to lose most its value
| within a few years. A house might gain value but if you want
| to actually realize the gains you are left without a place to
| live, so these gains are imaginary money.
| crackercrews wrote:
| > the house you live in and the car you drive are not
| investments
|
| The house? Probably not an investment. The land underneath
| it? That's a very different story.
| praptak wrote:
| It can kinda-sorta become an investment but only if you
| are prepared to move somewhere cheaper to retire.
| crackercrews wrote:
| You can also downsize and stay in the same area. Not
| uncommon for empty nesters.
| toto444 wrote:
| If I am correct, in the national accounts, the house
| households live in is considered an investment.
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| Its good insight but also recognize that all of these
| distinctions are arbitrary.
|
| The only usefulness in these observations is knowing that you
| can keep raising the rent and there will still be people
| willing to pay it. Too bad about the favela at the end of your
| driveway though, but the millionaire janitor's children will
| still be able to make rent.
| draw_down wrote:
| I think focusing on being a millionaire is not great, simply
| because a million bucks ain't what it used to be. Some places
| that will barely buy you a home. Top 0.1% doesn't sound so bad
| to me.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It's very easy to be a millionaire if you bought a big house or
| a small house in a desirable area >5 years ago with the
| exception of 2006-2008.
|
| With the Fed pumping out money like candy - debt isn't exactly
| a bad thing. It's basically a free asset.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I see this a lot on Reddit. People who bought homes a decade
| ago using mortgages are now sitting on a nice amount of
| equity.
| question000 wrote:
| I sometimes seriously wonder if you born around the 1960s, how
| didn't you become a millionaire?
|
| Rents were lower, wages were higher, safe investments like
| T-bills and CD had higher yields, homes exploded in value,
| education and health care were a fraction of the cost. If you
| worked at even a minimum wage job you were on track to being a
| millionaire just by putting money in the bank.
|
| I asked my parents about this recently and it turns out they
| actually are millionaires... I knew the were well off, but
| thought they had a third or a quarter of that, I literally had
| no idea.
| psyc wrote:
| My parents were born in the 40s, but they're roughly in the
| generation you're talking about. They're still poor. My mom
| didn't work much. My dad didn't make much. Neither were
| financially savvy.
|
| However, every last one of their 5 siblings is indeed a
| millionaire after leading relatively modest middle-middle
| class lifestyles. Maybe one of them you could call upper-
| middle, but even they traded thriftiness in most areas for
| the appearance of wealth in others.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| It's easy. How many people do you know spent every dollar
| they made? I don't know a single person from the period of
| 1950-1970 that didn't.
| [deleted]
| losvedir wrote:
| Similarly for milennials graduating around ~2008 like me. I
| had the good fortune to graduate right into the chasm of the
| financial collapse, so was happy with my little $28k/yr job.
| But with Boston not as crazy hot as it is now, and a
| roommate, rent was only $600/mo, with no need for a car. That
| meant I had plenty left over to put a bit in a low-cost index
| fund (VOO) every month, and damn, with the S&P 500 going from
| 800 then to 4,000 now... you can't help but end up with a
| good chunk of change in the bank!
|
| Graduates now are coming into a hot market, so on the one
| hand they probably can't expect such appreciation on their
| investments, but on the other you can get crazy high salaries
| right off the bat! I seriously think it's far easier to
| become a millionaire now than any other time in history.
| antognini wrote:
| If nothing else, inflation makes it easier to become a
| millionaire over time. A millionaire in the early 1900s
| would be equivalent to someone with $30 million today.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Yeah, with enough inflation 'millionaire' will mean next
| to nothing.
| [deleted]
| toto444 wrote:
| You got lucky but most people who graduate during a
| financial crisis pay for it their whole life. It is harder
| to get your first job so you get a not so good one and you
| can easily get stuck in a suboptimal situation for years.
| ghaff wrote:
| In the dot-bomb era, a _lot_ of people ended up with job
| offers rescinded or were laid off from their new jobs and
| ended up at least underemployed for 3 or 4 years. I
| consider myself _very_ lucky to have navigated that
| period with a relatively low salary but no meaningful
| time unemployed.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| That's likely true. It seems the people who graduated a
| year or two later were similar in many ways except that
| the job market was a lot better. And indeed many people
| with the option chose to get a little extra education
| like a masters degree rather than graduating for this
| reason.
| mcguire wrote:
| My mother was the head teller at a bank, with 40+ years of
| experience. When I graduated from college and got one of my
| first jobs, I mentioned my salary. She (who had been retired
| for several years at that time) told me she'd never made more
| than $25,000 per year.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Often the first trick is having children. It turns out to be
| a good way to spend a lot of money. Especially having
| relatively more children. Other ways are avoiding good
| investments (it's already easy today and was even easier 40
| years ago when brokerages were more high touch and it was
| harder to find good information. Another aspect is being bad
| at investing in the typical way: switching from equities to
| bonds when there's a market crash), avoiding investing at all
| (eg just putting money in a savings account), just spending a
| lot of money on depreciating assets and not saving, and not
| earning so much money in the early years when compounding
| pays off the most or the later years due to seeking out
| things other than high pay.
|
| In many ways it's not so different from today.
| ghaff wrote:
| People could also end up with extended periods of
| unemployment.
|
| Inflation was brutal around 1980. (~14%)
|
| Software development barely existed as a career option and
| you almost certainly needed a degree to land a job.
|
| When I graduated from engineering grad school in 1981, my
| highest offer was $27K and that was a sector (oil biz)
| which was pretty high-flying at the time. That's about $80K
| today which is certainly not nothing but probably on the
| low end of what a lot of software developers expect. (I had
| the good timing to go back to grad school--which had been
| in the plans anyway--just as the oil biz was entering one
| of its cyclical downturns.)
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Software development barely existed as a career option
| and you almost certainly needed a degree to land a job.
|
| I graduated in 1979. Both statements are quite incorrect.
| Software was paying well at the time, and was remarkable
| as more than a few in it had no degree, and certainly not
| a CS degree.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _When I graduated from engineering grad school in 1981,
| my highest offer was $27K and that was a sector (oil biz)
| which was pretty high-flying at the time._ "
|
| Hey, I remember that! My mother was retired from the bank
| she worked at for 40 years when the oil biz blew up in
| the late '80s.
| ghaff wrote:
| This was in about 1984. But I was also in the offshore
| drilling business which was especially sensitive to oil
| prices given that offshore drilling was relatively
| expensive.
| ip26 wrote:
| Single earner households were more common, mortgage interest
| rates were above 10% for years, material goods were more
| expensive. There was no YouTube for learning home or auto
| repair. Cars weren't very reliable. Not all roses.
| EVdotIO wrote:
| Good luck repairing a car now. They are way more reliable,
| and way more tolerant to owner neglect, but give me an old
| BMW 2002 or VW bug and I can repair pretty much everything
| in those machines with my Haynes manuals. Safety on the
| other hand is orders of magnitude better today.
| swiley wrote:
| Condos are still cheap. People need to chill out with the
| whole detached housing thing, it's not economical in the long
| run (centuries) and we're rapidly approaching the point where
| it stops making sense near the coasts of the US. A point many
| countries have already reached.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Condos are still cheap.
|
| Citation needed with respect to expensive cities. And you
| don't even need to get very far away from many of those
| cities--like an hour from Boston, for example--until land
| isn't really a limiting factor.
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| This also has something, if not, a lot to do with millionaire
| farmers, mostly funded by incredible and often corrupt
| subsidies from the government. So before subsidies and pork,
| they would have made a more modest wage, but the game can be
| abused pretty easily. If its not designed to be abused because
| what benefits big agriculture also benefits medium sized
| "family" farms. Family farms may actually be a series of a
| dozen or more farms where the owning family does no actual
| farming on their own, but still live a rural lifestyle
| (pickups, bud light).
|
| Secondly, its also skewed by government workers on fat pensions
| who can become millionaires pretty easily due to these
| collectively bargained benefits but also inflated salaries,
| especially overtime which is often abused in government jobs.
|
| Lastly, a lot of this is self-reporting. Some people like to
| put on a modest front for their own reasons. The author got to
| see their pickup truck and muddy workboots, but not their
| Florida vacation home or Wisconsin lake house. Or the Corvette
| under a cover in the 2nd garage.
|
| So some of the advice is hard to handle and not applicable to
| most. You can sort of FIRE your way into wealth and live like a
| miserable miser or hope you were born into a socio-economic
| culture where buying a lot of farmland is possible or getting a
| public sector union job is possible.
| Balgair wrote:
| > It's harder to be a millionaire if you're spending a lot of
| money.
|
| "When most people say they want to be a millionaire, what they
| really mean is "I want to spend a million dollars," which is
| literally the opposite of being a millionaire."
|
| -Morgan Housel
| estaseuropano wrote:
| There are various competing concepts that most of us conflate
| erroneously most of the time:
|
| * having much money in the bank * having much property/wealth
| on the balance sheet * earning much * having an important role(
| _)_ being able to afford all /most wants * living lavishly *
| being happy
|
| (*) Angela Merkel might be one of the most powerful world
| leaders but earns 'only' around 20k a year. Greta Thunberg
| moves mountains and earns little/nothing for it.
| radiator wrote:
| > Greta Thunberg moves mountains.
|
| I can only regard this as a joke, and not a very successful
| one, I am afraid.
| rabuse wrote:
| I'm with you there. Greta Thunberg has done what exactly?
| pvitz wrote:
| Per month...
| sien wrote:
| Merkel $US 426K per year.
|
| https://paywizard.org/salary/vip-check/angela-merkel
|
| She's the Chancellor of a country with a multi-trillion
| dollar economy.
| mtm7 wrote:
| I'd heard about Millionaire Next Door for years and mistakenly
| wrote it off as one of those scammy "buy my program" books
| about visualization.
|
| Then it was gifted to me, and boy, was I wrong! Couldn't put it
| down. It's packed full of interesting tidbits and data. While
| I'd highly recommend reading the book yourself, I also wrote
| some notes on it here [0].
|
| I'd love to see these same studies, but updated to 2021.
|
| [0]: https://mtm.dev/millionaire-next-door
| muhgarvey wrote:
| I've got good news for you! There was another book written 2
| years ago called Everyday Millionaires by Chris Hogan that
| conducted a new study of millionaires. I think MND studied
| 100 millionaires, while EM studied 10000.
|
| https://www.ramseysolutions.com/store/books/everyday-
| million...
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The book_ The Millionaire Next Door _provided data to
| support "Seek wealth, not money or status"._ [...] _I like the
| Tweet thread, but prefer the Millionaire Next Door cause it 's
| backed up by actual data._
|
| _Fooled by Randomness_ by Nassim Taleb, most /more famous for
| _Black Swan_ , pokes holes in the methodology used in _TMND_ ,
| specifically survivorship bias.
|
| Another observation from _FbR_ :
|
| > _I will set aside the point that I see no special heroism in
| accumulating money, particularly if, in addition, the person is
| foolish enough to not even try to derive any tangible benefit
| from the wealth (aside from the pleasure of regularly counting
| the beans)._
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/553605-i-will-set-aside-
| the...
| shipman05 wrote:
| Personally, I find living well below my means leads to a
| great deal of happiness. I never have to stress about money.
| Never have to worry about losing my job (as long as it isn't
| a long term loss). I can make future career decisions based
| on quality of life a not raw salary.
|
| It's an opportunity cost like anything else, but I would
| argue having more wealth than you need is a tangible benefit
| all its own.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Taleb should know that the benefit is having f*k you money. I
| suppose that once said money is obtained, there may be no
| greater advantage in accumulating more.
| roughly wrote:
| > High status professional are expected to drive nice cars and
| live in a big house. It's harder to be a millionaire if you're
| spending a lot of money.
|
| > The authors were surprised to find that a lot of the
| Americans with a net worth over a million did not fit any of
| the "millionaire stereotypes" at all. They drive an old pickup
| truck and drink Bud Light.
|
| So do you think people want the money, or do they want a big
| house and a fast car?
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Exactly the reason I didn't like "The millionaire next door".
| For me it misses the point completely.
|
| This book assumes that people want to be "millionaire" in
| order to stare at a 7 digits number before they die.
| lukas099 wrote:
| That's your prerogative, and there's nothing wrong with
| that. Others may prefer the freedom and stability afforded
| by a large amount of wealth-generating assets.
| [deleted]
| Opt_Out_Fed_IRS wrote:
| Did Naval steal this from Frank Underwood?
|
| "Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart
| after ten years. Power (or status) is the old stone building that
| stands for centuries"
|
| It's the same thing he's saying here, but like the guy Frank
| Underwood was talking to, Naval doesn't recognize that financial
| wealth is only more secure and fungible than social status if you
| can manage to move said financial wealth around before stuff hits
| the fan. So many examples to cite, ranging from Venezuela, to
| Zimbawe to Cyprus.
|
| And mind...stuff inevitably always hits the fan, when stuff hits
| the fan you want to have loyalists who'd defend you against your
| enemies.
|
| The whole reason why all investigation relating to Trump will end
| in a nothing burger. He has 75m people who follow him and the
| political cost of doing anything to him is simply too high.
|
| Also same reason why Musk can't be touched even though he
| violates the law every day, he has a huge cult following and the
| political cost of doing anything to him is again simply too high.
|
| Ideally you make money by lying low, then diversify (unless you
| are a hedge fund manager, in that case you are already
| diversified), then use money to build a following.
|
| I say ideally because you need smart people around to make money
| and smart people tend to be repulsed by people who are
| hyperfocused on building a cult following and a great social
| status (exhibit A : the turnover rate at Tesla)
| dandanua wrote:
| I don't see much logic in this wall of text.
|
| "Seek wealth, not money or status". What? To get wealth you need
| money to buy it. To get to the point B you have to pass the point
| A. That's why people are seeking money.
|
| Secondly, it's claimed that those who say "We don't want money"
| are playing another game - seeking high social status. That's
| another perverted logic. Seeking high social status is the most
| reliable way to have a lot of money without doing anything
| useful. That's why corruption is everywhere - people go to power
| to be rich, not because they want or able to solve societal
| problems. People who _really_ don 't seek richness don't seek
| high social status either.
| redisman wrote:
| The concepts are also linked together. Having lots of money
| automatically means having high status unless you actively
| reject it. If you think you don't have status but have lots of
| money then you merely need to go to places that only people
| with lots of money can get to and see how you get treated.
| jollybean wrote:
| The author is crossing streams with 'value capture' and 'value
| creation', they are not the same thing.
|
| Investing does create value, but a lot of it is just poker. Being
| better at poker than a fool is a net zero-sum win for society.
|
| Though most startups do create some value, it's also questionable
| in the big picture.
|
| And a huge amount of value is created by individuals who are not
| able to capture the surpluses.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This says something useful in among the stock nonsense - which is
| that wealth is not about what you own or how much you can spend,
| it's about _personal freedom._
|
| The interesting corollary is that in a capitalist economy hardly
| anyone is free. _You "win" freedom by buying it._ And that's what
| wealth is really for.
|
| This is why "We're all rich now compared to people two centuries
| ago" is nonsense. We're not, because the odds are good that we're
| more or less similarly unfree, especially if we're at the bottom
| of the heap and working the proverbial two or three jobs. Owning
| an iPhone doesn't change the fact that our time is almost wholly
| owned by others.
|
| It's also why it's impossible for a majority of people to be
| free. Someone has to do the actual work that keeps the lights on
| and food in the shops. Most people won't do that work
| voluntarily, so there has to be social leverage - implemented
| with loss of freedom - to force them into it.
|
| And it has to happen. Passive investing is worthless when there's
| nothing concrete to invest in. Corporate entrepreneurship is
| useless if there is no activity to manage, control, and profit
| from.
|
| The exceptions to this are genuinely creative activity.
| Invention, innovation (to a smaller extent), and cultural
| creativity are all individually powerful and can be
| disproportionately valuable, socially and economically.
|
| Coincidentally, they also attract more than their fair share of
| parasitic activity which seeks to capture their value for the
| benefit of others.
|
| But more - some people _need_ to have these differentials in
| personal power. They lean towards narcissism, and it 's important
| for them to feel more powerful than others.
|
| They will never, ever allow an economic system which doesn't
| constrain the freedom of those they consider inferior. It doesn't
| matter if it's run by machines or AI or any other magic
| technology. It's fundamental to their psychology to keep others
| in a one-down position, and they experience any threat to this as
| an unbearable narcissistic wounding.
|
| Inequality is not primarily an economic problem. It's a
| psychological issue - a public mental health issue, where the
| _point_ of inequality is to allow unhappy rather damaged people
| to feel better about themselves.
|
| This is orthogonal to issues of building, researching, inventing,
| and generally getting shit done collectively. Without
| narcissistic friction all of those would proceed more quickly and
| smoothly, with astoundingly positive consequences.
| abootstrapper wrote:
| Pseudo intellectual garbage, and the tweets read like if Ayn Rand
| wrote fortune cookies.
| slumdev wrote:
| > The purpose of wealth is freedom; it's nothing more than that.
| It's not to buy fur coats, or to drive Ferraris, or to sail
| yachts, or to jet around the world in a Gulf Stream. That stuff
| gets really boring and stupid, really fast. It's about being your
| own sovereign individual.
|
| This makes sense.
|
| > Today, I would rather be a poor person in a First World
| country, than be a rich person in Louis the XIV's France. I'd
| rather be a poor person today than aristocrat back then. That's
| because of wealth creation.
|
| I'm not sure we can have it both ways.
|
| If the purpose of wealth is to be sovereign and have the freedom
| and time to pursue my own interests, whatever they are, then it's
| better to be a wealthy person at any time in history than to be a
| poor person at any other time in history.
|
| A poor person today is going to spend 8-12 hours per day, 5-7
| days per week, working and commuting, depending on how many jobs
| they have, just to pay for necessities. An aristocrat in any time
| period is going to have far more time to do any of the things
| that fulfill him. Air conditioning, health care, and Netflix
| don't make up the difference.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Not dying early of childbirth or plague might make up some of
| the difference, though.
| jcoq wrote:
| This screed could be the keynote speech at a MLM conference.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| "Wealth is assets that you earn while you sleep"
|
| Sorry, but _somebody_ is still producing that wealth through
| their labor. It's just not _your_ labor. Wealth in the sense that
| the author is using the word is when you collect the fruits of
| _other people's_ hard work.
|
| No matter how you set up your economy, only a small number of
| people can live like that, so no, by definition this is not a
| strategy that _everyone_ can use. Otherwise, who would be doing
| all the actual work?
| fallingfrog wrote:
| As a corollary, I imagine that if I was a member of the class
| that owns things but does not work, I would not sleep well at
| night. After all, those who own wealth _need_ those who work.
| The ones who work know how to make things, grow food, set a
| broken bone, build bridges, change diapers, do all the things
| that need to be done, but those who own things can't do any any
| of that stuff on their own. In a way they're like helpless
| children. They need us, for everything.
|
| But do we need them? No. This article is literally saying that
| the property owning class can perform their function in society
| while they're asleep. Well, if that's true then they're not
| contributing anything of value.
|
| If I were one of those who own wealth, I would worry greatly
| that one day the people who work would figure this out. That's
| the sword of Damocles that hangs over the heads of the wealthy.
| jlawson wrote:
| >Sorry, but somebody is still producing that wealth through
| their labor.
|
| No, not necessarily.
|
| E.g. You write a novel. It's selling every day online. Whose
| labor are you collecting?
|
| If you say the customers' labor at their jobs - Yes, if you
| trace any chain of transactions far enough you can eventually
| find someone who did some labor. This is kind of meaningless
| though. It's true even if there's only one working human on the
| planet.
|
| Basically, you're restating the labor theory of value which is
| generally not considered credible by economists.
| moate wrote:
| How much of the economy would you estimate works on the
| "write a novel, sell it passively on a website you
| created/host/etc. yourself" model? Is this common in your
| mind or a very narrow example to make a point online?
| dave333 wrote:
| The key is that machines (bulldozers, airplanes, websites etc.)
| multiply work to produce more wealth per unit of labor based on
| a productivity multiplier. Labor is a free market that can fail
| due to wages being insufficient or can be distorted by a
| minimum wage that may reduce demand for work to the point of
| significant unemployment. Need to model the whole system in
| detail to reach any conclusions. Single sentence observations
| are nearly always wrong in some respect.
| christiansakai wrote:
| I love it how Americans and first world countries native born
| just love to bash these kinds of articles.
|
| While people like me who came from 3rd world country that
| immigrated to US and first world countries can relate with posts
| like these.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Exactly! I used to travel a lot for work and talk to Uber
| drivers all over the country.
|
| The immigrant ones had stories like "I own 3 of these cars, so
| 2 guys drive for me, and my daughter is in nursing school" or
| my favorite "I just got hired in Columbia University as a
| janitor so I can get my MBA there for free". While the
| Americans were just kinda resigned to driving the Uber.
|
| Immigrants are self selecting - we are people who chose to make
| moves, get off our asses to make something of ourselves .so of
| course the idea of accreting valuable skills and assets is
| going to resonate with us.
| christiansakai wrote:
| I love immigrant stories! U know what we have in common as
| immigrants. We just love to work and make money, to see that
| our hands actually produce money that goes into our bank
| statement just brings joy. It is almost not about the money
| itself but the honor that we get knowing that people
| appreciate our service.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > we are people who chose to make moves,
|
| It's easier to make a move when you have nothing to lose, or
| have a fallback option in your home country.
| christiansakai wrote:
| FYI, usually in 3rd world countries don't have unemployment
| benefit, govt support or bankruptcy laws. Not sure what
| fallback you meant here.
| xyzelement wrote:
| You probably can't imagine the kind of initiative it takes
| to leave where you are to start fresh somewhere else.
| THAT's the self-selection I am talking about.
| nicomeemes wrote:
| > Anyone can come here, be poor, and then work really hard and
| make money, and get wealthy.
|
| While I agree with _some_ of the article, I feel like this
| statement simply isn 't true anymore. Probably for
| software/hardware engineers, but there's a shrinking middle class
| in America who can't afford a house despite working multiple jobs
| and doing everything right. My grandfather worked at Safeway and
| could support my mom and save up to buy a house. Seems like this
| would be impossible now. I don't know what the crux of the
| problem is, but something is definitely wrong with our system.
| bombcar wrote:
| It can be done but it requires sacrifices that not everyone
| will be willing to do.
|
| For example, choosing a location "in the sticks" can certainly
| help.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Lack of supply, increasing demand. A system of government
| regulations designed to increase scarcity, while shuffling
| resulting gains to property owners.
| amelius wrote:
| > Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep
|
| Rent seeking is not regarded very highly on HN.
| oogabooga123 wrote:
| Bearing risk is not rent seeking, passive income does not imply
| rent seeking
| 127 wrote:
| There are different levels of rent seeking. For example I don't
| think there's anything wrong with loaning money for people who
| will use it to start a productive business.
|
| There's a lot wrong with corruption, where laws and politicians
| are bought with money. There's a lot of wrong with regulatory
| capture, where market regulation is distorted in a way that
| makes competition against the status quo next to impossible.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I think the negative aspect of rent-seeking is not so much
| passivity, but the lack of value added.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by "value," I guess, but it seems to
| me that being an effective participant in market economy is
| impossible without bringing some kind of value to the table
| (if only indirectly or as a side effect).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's a very new phenomenon that those two things are
| different, and it is still the case that they only differ on
| very few, very small niches.
|
| But yes, that seems correct to me.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I don't think so. Somebody once had to build the houses
| that they were collecting rent on. Time passes and what
| used to be value added becomes a simple matter of capital
| invested or inherited.
| 2ion wrote:
| What a mindless comment.
|
| Realistically speaking, rent seeking is the only way present
| young and future generations are able to participate in
| economic "growth" effectively. The human population grows, but
| the chance to participate in the industries and locations with
| the highest ROI on human capital does not. In fact, wage
| stagnation and inflation have stunted ROI on human capital in
| many non-growth industries in developed countries already.
|
| In fact, in my country where given the current trajectory of
| public policy I will see a huge net loss in pension benefits
| despite paying into the system more than any previoius
| generation in real terms already, without rent seeking through
| investing, I would literally end up poor as fuck and a slave to
| the state and would never have a chance to stop working short
| of just dying.
|
| Rent seeking is how the current system works, get over it.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| What if, and hear me out, we changed the system so it isn't
| the only way to accumulate wealth. You can walk and chew gum
| at the same time. At least I think so. One can decry
| immorality of rent seeking and understand it is a reality
| today.
| [deleted]
| nlitened wrote:
| Most of active HNers are employed in rent-seeking SaaS
| companies
| xyzzyz wrote:
| "Rent seeking" has a specific technical meaning, which is not
| the same as "collecting rent". Most SaaS companies are by no
| means rent seeking, and in fact it's hard for me to come up
| with an example of one that does it.
| edoceo wrote:
| Ticket Scalpers - my favourite example of rent-seeking
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Aren't ticket scalpers enabled by artificially low ticket
| prices?
| edoceo wrote:
| Sorta. But their real m/o ("value add") is they
| aggressively purchase the "fruit" (best seats) which
| pushes out regular market-price buyers. Then hold. Then
| sell at 5x to 120x list price. Its a game, similar to
| equities but perishable. Their only real service is
| standing in line in front of you to corner and add
| pressure.
| rexreed wrote:
| Are you speaking on behalf of the entire HN community? I didn't
| realize we all spoke with one voice.
|
| If anything, the HN groupthink is counterproductive. I find
| that the true value of the HN community is the diversity of the
| voices and opinions here, not what "all of HN" thinks, which is
| not always correct (and often not).
| fartcannon wrote:
| I try to read comments that speak for a group like the parent
| has as this, "From my perspective a nonzero number of people
| on HN think..."
|
| Because in reality, it only takes a few undisputed replys or
| posts to make someone assume it's a ubiquitous idea.
| rexreed wrote:
| But as you can see from the responses to the GP comment,
| many nonzero people on HN think and believe the contrary.
|
| So, the comment attempts to impose on the reader the
| perception that any contrary belief to what the commentary
| implies is a "normal HN opinion" is something that should
| not be held with credibility.
|
| It's counterproductive to say that some non-zero group of
| people on HN believe something when a possibly equal or
| greater non-zero group believe something to the contrary.
| It makes me wonder if the point of the comment is to
| suppress contrary positions.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Agreed. I was just try to help with framing if it was
| bothering you. If instead you're trying to help make the
| site better, well, more power to you.
| ashneo76 wrote:
| Rent seeking is how FAAANG companies make money. Secure the
| supply chain, low cost and cheap labor, fight right to repair,
| fight what does it mean to own a streaming movie and then
| charge exorbitant prices for services.
|
| They exploit people on both sides of their business: consumers
| and laborers
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| I find it interesting how many individuals appear to both
| love and hate FAAANG companies. They love the products but
| seemingly hate the fact that the companies exist.
|
| Would it not be equally fair to claim that both consumers and
| laborers also "exploit" FAAANG companies to their own
| benefit? Take Amazon as a single example - if not for the
| Amazon fulfilment centers, where else would these workers
| find employment? And if the claim is that it's such a
| terrible work environment, why not work somewhere else? Fact
| is, they are employed there of their own volition so clearly
| there must be some advantage over potential alternatives.
| Comparing Amazon to a hypothetical "perfect" employer is a
| straw man, a more fair comparison is to existing alternatives
| (including unemployment).
|
| Would it not be fair to also suggest that Amazon has,
| directly and indirectly, contributed to raising more people
| out of poverty than any other company in history? They have
| opened the global supply chain to everyday consumers on a
| massive scale. Because of this, one can now buy a 65" flat
| screen television for $500 USD - a price point within reach
| of many low income households and no longer considered a
| luxury purchase. And the factories where these are made are
| paying much higher wages in much better working conditions
| than existed previously. And they are continuously improving.
|
| Or consider AWS - this alone has enabled countless startups
| to succeed with virtually no upfront infrastructure costs. If
| AWS disappeared tomorrow, how many HN readers' jobs would be
| in serious trouble. How many newly minted millionaires owe
| their success, in some small part, to the services that AWS
| provides?
|
| The point is, this is a give and take situation. Sure FAAANG
| companies make money. Because we give it to them,
| voluntarily, because we have decided that the benefits they
| bring to us are worth more than the cash we exchange for it.
|
| If one has an issue with how any of these companies conduct
| themselves, the obvious response is to take your business
| elsewhere. If enough people agree, the business will adjust
| or a competitor will take its place.
|
| I don't personally care much for companies making it
| impossible to repair their products, but I'm also of the
| opinion that I can vote with my feet and with my money to
| help change that.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Fact is, they are employed there of their own volition
| so clearly there must be some advantage over potential
| alternatives._
|
| There was a good article on HN a few weeks back that
| interviewed people in Amazon's warehouses as the union
| debate heated up in the US. What struck me was that many
| were there because they didn't have other options. Some
| were previously working very middle class jobs which no
| longer existed because they were outsourced and now were
| making much, much less because there were no good
| alternatives. People choosing the lesser of two evils
| doesn't make for a compelling argument for the virtues of
| them acting out of their own volition. And that
| globalization that brought about that point may very well
| have lifted others elsewhere out of poverty but it seems to
| conflict with the article's claim about non-zero sum wealth
| generation.
| potmacure wrote:
| >if not for the Amazon fulfilment centers, where else would
| these workers find employment?
|
| In the brick and mortar stores that wouldn't have closed if
| Amazon wasn't there.
|
| >it's such a terrible work environment, why not work
| somewhere else?
|
| Because Amazon destroyed these somewhere elses.
|
| >Because we give it to them, voluntarily, because we have
| decided that the benefits they bring to us are worth more
| than the cash we exchange for it.
|
| This decision is wrong though. Humans are pretty bad at
| taking externalities into account.
|
| >I can vote with my feet and with my money to help change
| that.
|
| You can't when existing players use their established
| position as a way to prevent new players from entering the
| market.
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| >In the brick and mortar stores that wouldn't have closed
| if Amazon wasn't there.
|
| This seems unlikely, online shopping is far too
| convenient and provides far too much value for brick and
| mortar stores to compete. However, that's not to say that
| these stores necessarily went out of business. A savvy
| proprietor would see the writing on the wall and move
| their operations online.
|
| >Because Amazon destroyed these somewhere elses.
|
| Why Amazon? Would it also not be fair to say that
| consumers destroyed the somewhere elses by shopping
| online instead of on main street?
|
| >This decision is wrong though. Humans are pretty bad at
| taking externalities into account.
|
| That's the thing about freedom - when people are free to
| make their own decisions, one must accept that they may
| occasionally make (to some observers) irrational or
| counterproductive decisions. That does not mean that
| removing said freedoms is an acceptable solution.
|
| >You can't when existing players use their established
| position as a way to prevent new players from entering
| the market.
|
| This statement holds. Anti-competitive behaviour is
| counterproductive and should be discouraged because it
| has a negative impact on the free market.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| I don't think one should exclude a viable option for profit,
| just because of some poor actors.
|
| I think rent can be a beautiful way to earn profit and to
| connect with people.
|
| If you are earning with rent it doesn't necessarily mean that
| you're evil and that you're abusing your "customers" with
| unreasonable demands or unexpected surprises.
| vladmk wrote:
| " Wealth is money in the bank that is reinvested into other
| assets and businesses."
|
| So is it money in the bank then or is is it money reinvested? Or
| all of the above? He doesn't really clarify.
|
| Am I the only one that found holes in his thinking?
|
| Example: the more houses we build the cheaper it will be...fact:
| there is more houses today than at any other time in American
| history. House prices are only increasing...buying up a scarce
| resource like land doesn't help us create more of it, what helps
| us create more is investing in the resource.
|
| I'm not trying to put Naval down since I do admire him and some
| of what he says, I just can't put him on this guru pedestal
| others are...
|
| I think true wealth is being able to control your time however
| you'd like. Everything else after that is about power.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| It is true that becoming rich requires luck. So does completing
| college, landing a plumbing apprenticeship, or learning how to
| race a horse.
|
| I see life like I see poker. You need to learn enough about the
| rules to know when the odds are in your favor, then make your
| bets to take full advantage of the odds. In life, raising your
| skills in specific and deliberate areas will improve your odds.
| Then, you have to have enough agency to make the bets.
|
| Is that a guarantee that you'll achieve wealth? Certainly not.
| But you can learn how to improve your odds, and then take actions
| to put yourself in that improved position, and then be persistent
| and attentive to your progress. Analyze, adjust, optimize.
|
| Persistence is the thing, and by persistent, I mean over decades.
| If you're a solid poker player, you can make money over time. You
| may or may not ever have the right luck at the right time to win
| a major tournament, but you can still make a living at the
| vocation you choose. It's the same in building wealth. Have a
| deliberate plan that his high probability, but be open to
| identify windfall opportunities, and make a bet if you see the
| odds are worthwhile.
|
| There were a few deliberate choices I made to grow wealth. Each
| also took some amount of luck to transpire:
|
| - Choice: I put myself through college. My parents couldn't help,
| I had to pay for it myself. Luck: There were
| state and federal loan and grant programs to help with the cost,
| or I'd never have finished. - Choice: I decided to
| major in computer science instead of music. Luck: My
| dad's advice was that I'd be able to afford a more comfortable
| life in computer science. He'd chosen music. - Choice:
| I made the choice to move to Silicon Valley from the Midwest.
| That's where technology seemed to happen first. Luck:
| The only way I could do that was by living rent free for 3 months
| with a friend in Santa Clara that I happened to know. -
| Choice: I intentionally asked by boss for more responsibility.
| Luck: The company was in a growing market and needed engineering
| leadership. Promotions and raises followed. - Choice: I
| developed a business plan to open a new sales/services office in
| a foreign country. Luck: I had spent a lot of time
| traveling to that country on business and made friends with the
| people who established the business based on my plan and hired
| me. It was a lucrative choice. - I chose a lifestyle
| that left extra $ in the bank each paycheck, and then invested
| that money. Luck: My partner happened to have
| conservative approach to money management, and I listened to her.
|
| Each step was about improving my odds. Once I determined what to
| do, I had to find a way to make it happen, even if it took other
| people's assistance in some way. Finding that assistance at hand
| was the lucky part. I just had to have the agency accept it and
| act.
| snickersnee11 wrote:
| There's is for sure some good advice, but most of this is just
| useless word play, which does not give you any directions, but
| gives you a false sense of "life and society understanding". If
| you don't know that reading and work makes you wealthy, you're a
| probably a fool. It's important to tell people they can unite and
| work towards common good of humankind, but you should not title
| it "How to Get Rich".
| exabrial wrote:
| I disagree that wealth is limited (we can mine an exhaustless
| supply of minerals for instance). But he nails everything else.
| cweill wrote:
| I missed the part where he says that wealth is limited. Doesn't
| he says that wealth creation is a positive-sum game (I.e. 1+1=3
| thanks to automation and leverage), as opposed to status which
| limited and its pursuit is a zero-sum game? Wouldn't that mean
| that wealth is unlimited?
| lwouis wrote:
| > we can mine an exhaustless supply of minerals for instance
|
| Humanity is headed towards shortages of many critical metals,
| such a copper, within this century, with consequences on price
| and availability already felt and predicted to be a major geo-
| political issue within a few decades
| vincent-toups wrote:
| This has a real "I've read Rand and I'm using cocaine" vibe.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Yeah, he's correct you'll never make it to the top 0.01%
| working a job, but the jabs at socialists and the "makers vs.
| takers" are some Level 1 right-wing talking points. There
| certainly are makers and takers in our society, and the biggest
| takers are not the single parents getting $200 a month in food
| stamps, it's the capitalists whose businesses depend on
| cheating their workers out of wages, polluting the environment,
| and/or getting sweetheart government deals.
| redisman wrote:
| This article seems to be mostly very mediocre social
| commentary. Reminds me of an angsty high schooler (who's
| somehow rich and defending their position) describing their
| view of society
| jlawson wrote:
| Naval grew up poor in India.
| redisman wrote:
| I mean he's defending his current status as a rich person.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I feel like a lot of the immigrants I meet from India are
| landowners there and not exactly the lower class. They all
| talk about having people to clean their houses and do their
| laundry.
|
| Not rich per American standards, but definitely people that
| have an option if their gambles don't work out.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I am going to venture a guess that both you and the parent
| you are replying to belong to exactly the same economic
| strata as your parents. You haven't had to build yourself up.
|
| For someone who has built their life from 0 dollars broke ass
| immigrant to being in the 1%, Naval's narrative resonates as
| exactly the right advice.
| redisman wrote:
| I make more money than both my parents combined and I'm an
| immigrant if that's somehow relevant.
| gricardo99 wrote:
| This reads like a parody. He's trying to raise the status of tech
| entrepreneurs, painting it as the only truly virtuous endeavors,
| while literally saying he's not into playing status games.
|
| But there are plenty of other gems in here too. Some come off
| like silly ignorance, others as callous or at least very tone
| def. You have a ton of parasites in you, who are
| living off of you.
|
| Umm, no I don't. If you're talking about micro fauna, that's not
| parasites. Otherwise, Dude, you need to get that checked.
| It's not about taking something from somebody else. It's from
| creating abundance.
|
| But "disruption" inherently leads to winners and losers. There is
| a transfer from one group to another. Sure the end state may have
| more abundance than before but unless you address the disruption
| to those that lost out, you'll have people, perhaps many, who
| feel left out, impoverished and distrust or despise the system.
| You can label them as "status" seeking haters of wealth creation,
| it's a nice simple narrative, but divisive and counter productive
| to actually making the system work for more people and generate
| more wealth. Today, I would rather be a poor
| person in a First World country, than be a rich person in Louis
| the XIV's France.
|
| You have no understanding of the plight of the poor and homeless
| in America. French countryside estate with a dedicated staff to
| provide for all your needs, or the homeless guy standing on the
| corner with the "hungry" sign? Of course the latter is often
| afflicted with mental illness and substance abuse, but those
| factors are in no small part driven by our society's abundance
| distribution choices. Or is the "hungry" sign just an attempt to
| seek higher status? I think it's just food. We
| would all be living in massive abundance.
|
| What makes you so sure the abundance would be so evenly or widely
| distributed? The abundance we have now is becoming less and less
| evenly distributed, so jumping to this conclusion just hand waves
| past some big hurdles in getting there. It gets
| hijacked by improper pricing of externalities. It gets hijacked
| by improper yields, where you have corruption, or you have
| monopolies.
|
| Then perhaps the journalists that criticize tech entrepreneurs
| are actually functioning as a break against this hi jacking?
| "Status" and "wealth" games not so clearly delineated huh?
| Capitalism is not even something we discovered. It is in us in
| every exchange that we have.
|
| You can literally say this about any human behavior. Again, this
| just hand waves and papers over difficult and complex choices. It
| just assumes his world view is inherent and virtuous.
| We are the only animals in the animal kingdom that cooperate
| across genetic boundaries.
|
| False. And easy enough for anyone to search on this topic and see
| so. Everybody can be successful. It is merely a
| question of education and desire.
|
| Wow. If there was any doubt before, it's now obvious we're in a
| complete fantasy at this point. There's no bias, no prejudice, no
| advantages that one group has over another. Wait, well except
| education. Clearly we need to fix that because education isn't as
| easily accessible to all, right? But that's no big deal.
| I'm not talking about monopolies. I'm not talking about crony
| capitalism. I'm not talking about mispriced externalities like
| the environment.
|
| Yep, never mind. You're not talking about the real world.
|
| It goes on and on like this but Im done here.
| [deleted]
| gambiting wrote:
| "You want wealth because it buys you freedom--so you don't have
| to wear a tie like a collar around your neck; so you don't have
| to wake up at 7:00 a.m. to rush to work and sit in commute
| traffic; so you don't have to waste your life grinding productive
| hours away into a soulless job that doesn't fulfill you."
|
| Am I the only one here who doesn't have any kind of "wealth" as
| defined by the author, yet doesn't suffer from any of the above?
| We don't wear ties, I don't have a commute, and I really enjoy my
| job. Is investing any of my time(as in - sacrificing time that
| would be otherwise spent with my family or just on relaxing) in
| "wealth" still the right choice?
| xyzelement wrote:
| Honestly, it's a metaphor. It makes sense to try and understand
| the intended lesson. The fact that you don't actually wear a
| tie at work is kinda besides the point.
|
| I LOVE my work. But I also LOVE the idea that I can stop
| working if I wanted to, at least for a while, because of
| savings.
| lukas099 wrote:
| That's awesome! Unfortunately it isn't true for a lot of us.
| [deleted]
| neogodless wrote:
| If money was no object, would you live your life exactly the
| same way?
|
| But to your point, if you live your life in a way you hate just
| to accumulate money, you're also doing it wrong (in my
| opinion).
|
| Try to accumulate money through work you enjoy, but if you can
| build up wealth to give you additional choices and control over
| how you use your time.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >Ending up in an orange jumpsuit in prison or having a reputation
| ruined is the same as getting wiped to zero--so never do those
| things.
|
| Only if you lose everything too or get a really long sentence. I
| think Michael Milken is an obv. counterexample to this, having
| kept his wealth and reputation. Jordan Belfort got a lucrative
| book, movie and consulting gig from his behavior. many others.
| [deleted]
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > But for the fourth kind of luck, there isn't a common cliche
| out there that matches the unique character of your action
|
| "Right spot, right time"
|
| I think there's a lot of flaws in the reasoning and
| characterizing anyone who isn't prioritizing wealth creation (or
| even the concept of a tax) as a parasite is extremely miopic. For
| one, if you don't have any customers, good luck creating your
| wealth. The data repeatedly shows that a stronger safety net
| (which requires taxes) encourages more risk taking and better
| allocation of wealth creation. Characterizing those that aren't
| able to have that freedom as parasites... you have to be really
| full of yourself to make a claim like that.
| croes wrote:
| So he invested in Clearview AI and wish.com. Thanks for that ...
| not. "Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep; it's the
| factory of robots cranking out things." Yeah, robots for sure.
| msarrel wrote:
| There's some interesting philosophical concepts here, but nothing
| really hacker newsworthy. This is just someone carrying on that
| we should be like him without telling us how. Does anyone else
| note the irony here that he says he is only interested in
| acquiring wealth, not in status, yet this whole article is really
| just advertising for his status?
| arkitaip wrote:
| That's naval's entire thing. Just trite thinking packaged to
| inflate his own ego as a "thought leader".
| paulpauper wrote:
| yes, the only reason anyone cares what he has to say is because
| of his status
| therufa wrote:
| not necessarily. before his appearance on the JRE podcast I
| didn't know him at all (i know i live under a rock), yet i've
| found his ideas compelling. Although Joe doesn't invite
| nobodies for the most part, so i might be wrong to some
| extent.
| paulpauper wrote:
| you just explained it. joe rogan does not have nobodies.
| think of how many ppl write to him asking to be on his
| podcast. think of all the mail his producers get.
| srameshc wrote:
| > But the reality is everyone can be rich.
|
| Reality is everyone can not be rich. So this is pseudo
| philosophy, with all due respect.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| I think "Everyone can be rich", extremely depends on your
| definition of rich.
|
| And that definition not only varies from person to person but
| also due to geography and other factors.
| grey-area wrote:
| It varies most over time.
| ______- wrote:
| Define rich? I've always loved the quote:
| Some people are so poor, all they have is money -- Patrick
| Meagher
|
| You can be rich and have poor taste, rich and alone, rich and
| never have the simple experiences of everyday 'poorer folk'.
| DennisP wrote:
| The very next sentence explains what he means:
|
| > But the reality is everyone can be rich. We can see that by
| seeing, that in the First World, everyone is basically richer
| than almost anyone who was alive 200 years ago.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| > We can see that by seeing, that in the First World,
| everyone is basically richer than almost anyone who was alive
| 200 years ago.
|
| And we can also see that those riches in large part rest on
| the poverty of people who happen to be outside the first
| world, even for basic necessities like food and clothes.
|
| Externalising the poverty doesn't make it not exist.
| chii wrote:
| > Externalising the poverty
|
| poverty isnt some conserved property that needs to be
| "externalized" to make the developed world rich.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| It may not "need" to be[0], but the externalisation of
| poverty is precisely how the particular quality of life
| that the lower classes in most developed countries enjoy
| is maintained - from the workers that make their fast
| fashion to the ones that assemble (or mine raw materials
| for) electronics that they cannot afford themselves.
|
| 0. At some point in the not-so-far-off future we will get
| around to automating all of these things, but until then
| people have become too deeply entitled to commodities
| produced by other people that are paid poverty wages.
| [deleted]
| pmorici wrote:
| Believe he addresses this criticism thusly...
|
| " At the same time, deep down many people believe they can't
| make it; so they don't want any wealth creation to happen. They
| virtue signal by attacking the whole enterprise, saying, "Well,
| making money is evil. You shouldn't do it."
|
| But they're actually playing the other game, which is the
| status game. They're trying to be high status in the eyes of
| others by saying, "Well, I don't need money. We don't want
| money.""
| CJefferson wrote:
| Just saying "disagree with me? Then you are just playing a
| status game" isn't a criticism, it's just making stuff up.
|
| The world is full of evidence that one of,if not the biggest
| factor on people's wealth is the wealth of their parents.
| It's incredibly hard to escape povity.
| jl2718 wrote:
| No that's money. You need to read the article. He freely
| admits you can't win that game.
| dasloop wrote:
| Not in the physical world but maybe in the digital world where
| material scarcity is a fixable imposition and attention can be
| artificially constructed.
| pdpi wrote:
| That's the whole point of the article. Wealth-rich and money-
| rich are not the same thing.
|
| I have access to pretty good healthcare (both privately And
| publicly). I have access to museums, and the internet, and I
| have a fire brigade and ambulances if I have some sort of
| accident. All of these things are wealth that we've built as a
| society and only tangentially related to how much money I
| personally have.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Exactly. You also have access, presumably, to a warm home in
| the winter, aren't suffering from pests and predatory
| animals, you can learn or be entertained in a million of
| ways. The fact that people can't perceive all of that as an
| incredible blessing says more about them than anything else.
| rabuse wrote:
| Exactly. So many people think being "rich" is having the
| mansion, Ferrari, and the yacht. Those are just highly-
| priced, luxurious products that people buy to status-flaunt
| most of the time (I know so many here in Florida). We live
| in the greatest time humanity has ever seen in terms of
| abundance, and survivability.
| throwkeep wrote:
| Everyone can be rich, because it's a positive sum game. You
| having a computer doesn't take it from someone else. Every
| person on the planet can have one.
|
| It's not a fixed pie. We are growing the pie. Most people in
| "developed" countries are rich from a historical perspective.
| We have shelter, running water, cheap and plentiful food (so
| much that we waste over 30%), electricity, microwaves,
| refrigerators, pocket computers and so on. There's no reason
| this can't come to the entire world and continue to improve for
| all.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Sure, if you define the word rich as "owns more than a naked
| caveman" then everyone is rich in the world I suppose.
|
| But you are just playing words games.
| chii wrote:
| but if you define rich as "having more than your fellow
| human beings", then you cannot ever have everyone be rich.
| But that definition is not what most people would use.
| staticman2 wrote:
| I'd maybe define a rich person as "someone who is capable
| of working but does not need to labor ever again in order
| to have a comfortable amount of food, water, shelter, and
| medical care."
|
| Everyone probably cannot be rich like this unless we
| invent some sort of frighteningly advanced automation to
| take care of our basic needs.
| kopochameleon wrote:
| > unless [the exact scenario Naval is talking about]
|
| Good example of "all or nothing thinking" here. "Toiling
| every day on the backs of humans for our every need" OR
| "Frighteningly advanced automation" -- reality is higher
| fidelity than that.
|
| We're already SO far towards the latter scenario (washing
| our clothes magically with the press of a button),
| painting it as a dichotomy only serves to highlight how
| out of touch with reality the immutable scarcity
| worldview is.
| des1nderlase wrote:
| Or is it? Being rich is a moving target. The same as
| being successful.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| Allocation of land is indeed a fixed pie. Say being rich is
| everyone having an 1-acre SFH lot with a view of the ocean.
| No matter what sort of monetary system we place, there is
| hard limit to the number of lots that could exist. Some
| people will have to live further inland.
|
| No amount of toasters will change the fact that some people
| will have to live inland.
| paulpauper wrote:
| If wealth is status, which the two are often linked, then
| everyone cannot be rich.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Read the article - he intentionally breaks apart wealth which
| is non zero sum, and status, which is.
| DistressedDrone wrote:
| I was commenting about this earlier, here's a link to a study
| that says otherwise:
| https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaau1156.full
|
| Or rather, it says people who are advantaged (ie lucky)
| considerably underestimate the contribution of this advantage to
| their success, and overestimate their own contribution.
|
| On the article itself, the stated idea of status is truly naive
| if not delusional, and allows them to put anyone who disagrees
| with their idea into the box of "status game players, to be
| ignored".
|
| I'm not going to read the entire article, it reads like advice to
| people who don't need it (upper middle class people). I'm sure it
| must be comforting to the author, and upper middle class and rich
| people, but in reality there is no clear path from "poor" to
| "rich", or else everyone would be taking it.
|
| What I will say is they seem to understand that our economic
| system is irrational, and to take advantage of it seems rational.
| But an irrational system is also unfair, and I would rather
| people not praise this unfairness as "good". The author seems to
| be paying lip service to the idea of "ethics" while teaching
| people to abuse the system. And they dare to talk about "virtue
| signaling".
| clairity wrote:
| a subversive if subtle inversion also underlies the argument,
| that status is subservient to wealth. instead, status _is_ the
| game, and wealth is a conspicuous component of that. everything
| we consider 'sociopolitical' is about trading various proxies
| of status, including wealth, to try to 'level up' on the status
| meter.
|
| his obfuscation is plainly designed to enhance the statused
| (like him) against the rising threat of the unstatused by
| confusing the potential up-and-comers.
|
| also, luck is inherently cognitively dissonant. as such, it
| insists on rationalization, and rationalizations grounded this
| way inherently lack explanatory power beyond the individual
| and/or circumstance (since they're projective rather than
| observationally exhaustive).
| vladmk wrote:
| 100%. A lot of survivorship bias in his diatribe. I feel most
| people I n this thread won't like what you're saying though,
| because it goes against the very belief drilled into Silicon
| Valley ideology.
| zpeti wrote:
| I can guarantee you one thing, if you don't try and complain
| about how only privileged people can do it, you DEFINITELY
| won't get rich or be successful or whatever your metric is.
|
| If you try, you might fail, and you might fail because of
| things outside your control, and it won't be your fault.
|
| But you might succeed.
|
| Your choice.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Pretty sure no one is saying to not try. Quite the opposite.
| Many simply understand that yes, luck does matter. You need
| to try _and_ get lucky.
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| No one is saying only privileged people can be successful.
| Just that observation has shown that the odds are stacked
| against them. I would call that unjust, and thus would be
| accused of playing the status game.
|
| It's a toxic argument.
| Xplune13 wrote:
| I agree. The act of trying itself opens you up to new
| possibilities which are just locked if one just complaints
| and do nothing about it. That's why trying is necessary.
|
| But that doesn't mean one should deny the fact that some
| things are entirely dependent on pure luck. In my opinion,
| the luck part starts even before you're actually born (your
| place/country of birth, family etc.). So, one should
| acknowledge the fact that luck too played an important role
| in their current wealth along with their own hard work.
| megaman821 wrote:
| But what meaning does luck have if you consider every
| positive thing in life luck? You were lucky you were born
| with the ability to see. You were you didn't die of
| childhood disease.
|
| If it was 100% luck, China and India would have most of the
| good things in the world since the have more lotto tickets
| (people) than the rest of the world.
| Xplune13 wrote:
| I didn't say it was 100% luck. I said, trying itself is
| opening up to new opportunities and possibilities. After
| all luck is just a game of possibilities and chances.
|
| There isn't a universal definition of luck and there
| won't ever be. The border between what is luck and what
| isn't changes every person to person. Your country,
| family wealth (which then pays for your education) play
| an important role in one's life and their wealth. A
| "rich" person on some poor island most probably won't be
| considered rich in any Western country.
|
| Now it matters what you do with that what you have.
| Scoring high or low in academics is up to me which would
| contribute to my wealth in future. I'm not saying that
| academics is the only metric here, but people having high
| score are generally more "wealthy" than those that don't
| according to my observation. So all of it matters on what
| you do with the given time and opportunities.
| croes wrote:
| So constant failure is a choice, success is not.
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| The article is insane. Pure ideological reductive bs.
|
| To say anyone who points out social injustice plays a silly
| mean game of status is the most cynical thing I've read in a
| while. As if capitalists weren't driven by status.
|
| And describing taxes as stealing is simply juvenile and fucking
| stupid and unhelpful.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Taxes are something we've decided is in the collective
| interest, but they are still the government reaching into
| your pocket. Especially with ever increasing overreach,
| mainly to fund blowing up kids overseas, I can understand
| this opinion.
| ixacto wrote:
| I'd say taxes are halfway stealing and halfway actually doing
| good things for society.
|
| Paying income taxes into the national debt and finding the
| military industrial complex is not that appetizing. That is
| just allowing for geopolitical shenanigans and bombing poor
| people the world over. Also funding the state governments
| (hello CA/NU) that think that they are small countries is
| ridiculous.
|
| Paying property taxes to fund EMS/schools/roads is an
| entirely different thing that I fully support.
|
| But yeah, right now as a whole we are paying way too much tax
| IMO and could get away with paying like half if we got rid of
| the military and bloated government. Then you could have the
| first 100k that you make you actually get to keep.
| [deleted]
| rini17 wrote:
| Seems to me either you haven't experienced yourself the
| distinction between wealth creating and status seeking. Or you
| put it all into the box "they delude themselves they create
| wealth, to be ignored".
| DistressedDrone wrote:
| You are right, I don't have rich friends who create wealth.
| But if I to choose one as a friend or mentor to make the
| world a better place, I'll side with the person not trying to
| game an entire society to get richer, regardless of the
| other's stated intention to "create wealth for everyone".
|
| That said, I don't doubt that they do create wealth, I just
| think any benefits to society are incidental, and that the
| logical rigor of their ex post facto justification is
| lacking.
| dataangel wrote:
| > Humans don't have that. I can cooperate with you guys. One of
| you is a Serbian. The other one is a Persian by origin. And I'm
| Indian by origin. We have very little blood in common, basically
| none. But we still cooperate.
|
| I'm not a geneticist and I'm having trouble conjuring the right
| search terms to find a source, but I seem to recall reading not
| too long ago that all humans are more related to each other on
| average than members of most other species, because we very
| "recently" (still millions of years) went through a near-
| extinction event, making our gene pool less diverse than most
| other species because everybody alive today comes from the few
| people that survived that event. So altruism in most animals is
| actually more impressive than altruism in humans.
| Teledhil wrote:
| Only 75000 years ago, but maybe the Toba eruption?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Geneti...
| mkl wrote:
| It may be way more recent than that, more like 3000 years:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor#T
| M...
|
| - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040930122428.
| h...
| nine_k wrote:
| Assuming that the Indian speaks Hindi, all three languages are
| Indo-European, assuming even closer historically recent ties.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The stuff about capitalism being intrinsic and status games being
| zero sum suggests a rather myopic view of society. Of course many
| economic exchanges are positive-sum. But it does not follow that
| this drive is universal; it just looks that way to people whose
| social circle consists of others engaged in the same virtuous
| circle. Nor does it follow that others don't get it or are
| playing zero-sum status games; there are different groups with
| different motivations.
|
| Research suggests there are 4 major groupings whose interests are
| only somewhat coincident:
| https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451
| pototo666 wrote:
| > You Won't Get Rich Renting Out Your Time
|
| > Live Below Your Means for Freedom
|
| > Learn to Sell, Learn to Build
|
| Personally I like these three pieces.
|
| HN users are good at picking something they don't agree and agure
| against it. It's fine. But how about discuss what you believe is
| intereting and useful?
| cweill wrote:
| +1 to these three. I also like the observation about the only
| things that are "permissionless and limitless leverage" being
| media and code. If you position yourself along on of those (or
| both) and are patient, you have the chance to become extremely
| wealthy, especially once you've mastered the other 3 points you
| mentioned.
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