Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 303 posts

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#291

Post by dv_dt »

wycx wrote: post #287
dv_dt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure that removing mortgage interest deduction would do anything to help pricing in home markets. People owning rental properties get to deduct interest on financing used for the property. If we eliminated the mortgage interest deduction for home owners, we would be strongly favouring rent seeking behaviour - literally.

That's why you also have to tax away all capital gains associated with land (not structures) value appreciation beyond the real inflation rate. Land (outside of reclamation edge case) is not created by humans, and when land becomes private property it is necessarily depriving the public of the use of that land, thus the land owner owes the public for the right to deprive them of the land in the form of land tax, and…

Let's say someone takes out a loan to buy land with a set of apartments built upon it. After subtracting loan payment costs (including interest on the loan), they're making a positive cashflow. How much of that cashflow is from the land and how much is from the apartment structure? Perhaps it's just that I'm unfamiliar with the split you're proposing, but it seems really naive to think that one can simply "tax away all capital gains associated with the land" when there doesn't seem to be any clean way to differentiate what comes from land.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#292

Post by 100k »

akvadrako wrote: post #235
100k wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big point that Robert Frank makes in "Success and Luck" (the book this interview is about). Being born in a developed country is one of the luckiest things you can have happen to you. He talks about his time in Nepal for the Peace Corps and a man who worked for him, who was one of the most talented people he's ever worked with. He was also illiterate and living in a developing country, so his prospects were…

This is kinda a weird thing to call "luck" though. "You" could also have been born a duck, a 1000 years ago, in the future or in another universe (maybe). But then "you" would have been somebody else and hence, not "you" at all. In other words, "you" had 100% chance of being you . No luck involved.

It's basically the _definition_ of luck: "the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual"

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#293

Post by akvadrako »

100k wrote: post #292
akvadrako wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kinda a weird thing to call "luck" though. "You" could also have been born a duck, a 1000 years ago, in the future or in another universe (maybe). But then "you" would have been somebody else and hence, not "you" at all. In other words, "you" had 100% chance of being you . No luck involved.

It's basically the _definition_ of luck: "the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual"

And what event or circumstance are you talking about? Nothing happened to you when you were born - because you are an emergent entity that is defined by your life.

This isn't like flipping a coin: it could come up heads or tails.

You must be thinking of some kind of immortal soul.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#294

Post by philosopheer »

huge success may have luck, but it is always in combination with greed.

The average worker and entrepreneur wannabe in Silicon Valley has nowhere near the requisite and absolute focus on pure self interest that Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. have/had. Look to how Woz or Paul Allen was treated by them.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#295

Post by gergoerdi »

emodendroket wrote: post #162
willholloway wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The liberal view of this issue may have the virtue of being correct, but it's very counterproductive from the individual's standpoint. I know that the ideology espoused on sites such as dailykos.com were very detrimental to personal drive and success in my college years of 18-22. That ideology kept pounding home the idea of the unfairness of the economy, of the lower share of the pie allocated to labor vs capital and…

So your position is that we should just all believe outright falsehoods if it's "useful?"

Of course? If you want to recover 'not believing outright falsehoods' from that, just assign a very high value to 'truth' in your utility function.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#296

Post by quadrangle »

drewgross wrote: post #214
quadrangle wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait, what? There's a $250k capital gains exemption for sale of primary home lived in 2 of past 5 years, so isn't capital gain basically irrelevant to anyone but very wealthy? Do you know something I don't? (reasonably likely)

What he means is that the deduction has been "priced in" to the price of homes/mortgages. In a similar story, a company I used to work for once offered employees a $x incentive to live close to the office. They then found that the price of homes in the area immediately went up by $x.

Got it, of course! Capitalized could be a formal tax term in this case, but it was just meant in terms of actual plain capitalization generally.

Yeah, mortgage tax deduction, like all incentives that encourage borrowing more money, ends up being a transfer of wealth from new homebuyers to whoever had owned property outright (whether older long-term homeowners or developers or real estate investors).

Very important point.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#297

Post by thebspatrol »

fnl wrote: post #234
thebspatrol wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another commenter used the phrase "luck surface area", which I think plays well into the concept that everything is hinged on an element of luck, where harder workers and people with better birthright generally have larger "surface area".

While I agree that you can increase you "luck surface area" (e.g., by taking more chances), that doesn't mean it will help. It implies you also are increasing you "unlucky surface area", so if you "somehow" attract (?) more good/bad luck, you might as well just end up being far more miserable than if you had not. In other words, I don't believe luck to be a variable, it seems much more of a constant that you've been…

Yes, but what is "bad luck"? For most people "luck" really means "how wide have I spread my net" -- how many people are willing to give me opportunities? When we say "luck surface area" I don't think we mean legitimate zero-sum odds, because we're only talking about luck idiomatically. You don't have much to lose by putting yourself first in line for as many opportunities as possible.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#298

Post by swedishdaddy »

vitaminbandit wrote: post #290
charlesdm wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I say it's an average thing? I said, if you want to dedicate 20 years of your life to it, not focusing on other things, living in a Western country, you can do it. Nowhere did I say it's a common thing. Second, there are plenty of people who manage to make $10,000+ a month online, regardless of where they live. Probably millions. Also, even in impoverished countries there must be opportunities to make money and d…

ctrl + F: "20 years", "Western country", "not focusing on other things"

The words were not there in the first message.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#299

Post by wycx »

dv_dt wrote: post #291
wycx wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you also have to tax away all capital gains associated with land (not structures) value appreciation beyond the real inflation rate. Land (outside of reclamation edge case) is not created by humans, and when land becomes private property it is necessarily depriving the public of the use of that land, thus the land owner owes the public for the right to deprive them of the land in the form of land tax, and…

Let's say someone takes out a loan to buy land with a set of apartments built upon it. After subtracting loan payment costs (including interest on the loan), they're making a positive cashflow. How much of that cashflow is from the land and how much is from the apartment structure? Perhaps it's just that I'm unfamiliar with the split you're proposing, but it seems really naive to think that one can simply "tax away a…

It is done all the time via depreciation calculations.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#300

Post by FabHK »

ergothus wrote: post #33

My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…

BTW, might want to get your dad that book the interview was about (Robert Frank: "Success and Luck"). It's a good read, and you'll have something more to discuss :-)
Post reply on HN