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Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

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Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#81

Post by jimbokun »

mruts wrote: post #9

Life tells you what you should do in two ways: what you like to do and what you are good at. Of course liking something and being good at it often go hand in hand. When you are good at something, it’s fun to keep doing it so you feel better than other people. When you like to do something, you often get good at it.

I would add to those two "and brings value to others". There are plenty of things you might love doing and are good at, that will leave you destitute and unfulfilled if you devote your life to them.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#82

Post by cat199 »

lumost wrote: post #48
slg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is weird to see this mindset on a site that is basically founded on the idea that taking on debt can be valuable. What would the startup scene be like if everyone avoided debt at all costs?

Selling equity in a startup is very different from taking on debt, with debt your committing the business to a strategy, if it doesn't work the business will probably fold. While this makes sense for capex intensive businesses. It's an irrational choice for a tech startup that may need to pivot, partner or be acquired. For those choices you need a source of capital with similar incentives as the founders.

> Selling equity in a startup is very different from taking on debt, with debt your committing the business to a strategy

wha? selling debt you are committing yourself to a financial obligation, selling equity you are committing yourself to a strategy in the hope that that strategy will be successful.. yes, it is not binding fiscally and so the strategy can be renegotiated without penalty, but that doesn't by proxy imply the converse that debt inherently requires a fixed strategy..

this is why you can get cash flow/line of credit loans based simply on historical accounting data, etc..

that said getting loans under false pretenses is also fraud. YMMV

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#83

Post by lozaning »

sixhobbits wrote: post #57

Funny how some of it seems like good common sense and then you get > Some men have a foolish habit of telling their business secrets. If they make money they like to tell their neighbors how it was done. Nothing is gained by this, and ofttimes much is lost. Say nothing about your profits, your hopes, your expectations, your intentions. And this should apply to letters as well as to conversation. Goethe makes Mephisto…

"Those who know dont tell and those that tell dont know" - something an uncle used to tell me as a little kid.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#84

Post by valesco »

Balgair wrote: post #77
sixhobbits wrote: post #57

Funny how some of it seems like good common sense and then you get > Some men have a foolish habit of telling their business secrets. If they make money they like to tell their neighbors how it was done. Nothing is gained by this, and ofttimes much is lost. Say nothing about your profits, your hopes, your expectations, your intentions. And this should apply to letters as well as to conversation. Goethe makes Mephisto…

In The Count of Monte Cristo , the Count ruins Danglers' fortune via bond market manipulation per his revenge plans. One of the ways he keeps track of how the ruination progress is via Danglers' own words. At first, Danglers boasts loudly in parties about how much he has lost, but eventually he is cowed and no longer talks about money or his fortune. The Count keep track of his boisterousness as a barometer of his re…

It is really a superheros story, just subtler and more dramatic.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#85

Post by dang »

epr wrote: post #55
JeanMarcS wrote: post #8

> Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. It is a slavish position to get in... Well, that put student debt in perspective no ?

> I do not speak of merchants buying and selling on credit, or of those who buy on credit in order to turn the purchase to a profit. Did you really just not read the article at all? He is clearly referring to things like consumer debt rather than investments.

Could you please follow the site guidelines when posting here? Your comment would be fine with just the last sentence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#86

Post by ed312 »

radlad wrote: post #63
wnevets wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't for the urban dwellers flyover usa's subsidizing water, electricity, mail delivery, telephone, etc they would have a very different about the free market.

Can you rephrase this comment? I couldn't follow it at all.

I think the argument is something like: It is not profitable to provide the current level of service to rural areas. Because of the high productivity of urban areas, we can redistribute resources and improve rural public infrastructure.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#87

Post by ableal »

arethuza wrote: post #39
ErikAugust wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still extremely true. https://snowbrains.com/map-nobody-lives-usa-47-usa-uninhabit...

Even the densely populated UK has significant proportions where nobody lives: https://artplusmarketing.com/nobody-lives-here-united-kingdo... Edit: I suspect the grid squares being used are of different sizes, but even so - the crowded bits of the UK are even more crowded than the overall population density would suggest.

They're about the same size: the UK map blocks are 1 km x 1 km

US: "the United States consists of 11,078,300 Census Blocks." The USA area is 9.834 million km², according to a well-known search engine.

So about .9 km² in average, roughly in line with "Of them, 4,871,270 blocks totaling 4.61 million square kilometers were reported to have no population living inside them".

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#88

Post by slg »

lumost wrote: post #48
slg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is weird to see this mindset on a site that is basically founded on the idea that taking on debt can be valuable. What would the startup scene be like if everyone avoided debt at all costs?

Selling equity in a startup is very different from taking on debt, with debt your committing the business to a strategy, if it doesn't work the business will probably fold. While this makes sense for capex intensive businesses. It's an irrational choice for a tech startup that may need to pivot, partner or be acquired. For those choices you need a source of capital with similar incentives as the founders.

From a business perspective equity is just debt with less defined terms. That gives the business more flexibility and might allow it to pivot, but the obligation to pay back funds in some way is the same.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#89

Post by rc_kas »

All praise be unto this fourmilab.ch website. This is the old internet. The internet that I first fell in love with. Its purely about the information, just an honest straight provider of information. Its a truly loyal ode to the term "information highway". These types of websites are so rare now.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#90

Post by nathanvanfleet »

loudmax wrote: post #19
JeanMarcS wrote: post #8

> Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. It is a slavish position to get in... Well, that put student debt in perspective no ?

Barnum himself spent much of his life in and out of debt. He was a great showman and many of the performances he arranged were extreme financial successes, but he was a profligate spender and he was always one disaster away from going deep into dept.

Is this a good reason to go into debt?
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