"when journalists attack rich people, or attack the technology industry, they’re really bidding for status"
There's a lot of that going on these days.
How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
51–60 of 193 posts
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#52>> But then of course Uncle Sam show up, and basically say, “Hey, you know what, you just made a lot money this year. Therefore, you’re rich. Therefore, you’re evil and you’ve got to hand it all over to us.” The government doesn't tax rich people because they're evil - they tax rich people to provide food, education, and security for society. Progressive taxes are useful because they help fight poverty and allow the…
Why do you assume that the only way for people to have food, education and security is through taxation?
Why do you assume that without taxes the system would devolve into poverty and extreme inequality?
The economy is not a linear equation with taxation and poverty as inversely related variables.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#53>> But then of course Uncle Sam show up, and basically say, “Hey, you know what, you just made a lot money this year. Therefore, you’re rich. Therefore, you’re evil and you’ve got to hand it all over to us.” The government doesn't tax rich people because they're evil - they tax rich people to provide food, education, and security for society. Progressive taxes are useful because they help fight poverty and allow the…
I am of the opinion that the government taxes rich people more because there are fewer of them and they are less likely to vote out the politicians who do it.
It's the masses voting bread and circuses for themselves.
Rich people only have the option of leaving but pretty much every place worth living does the same thing.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#54I listened to the Rogan podcast and was definitely confused by some of the arguments he makes e.g. he claimed the celebrities are the "most miserable people in the world" because they get a disproportionate amount of hate directed toward them due to their status as public figures (or something). I don't believe that for a minute. I was also a bit surprised by the discussion around questioning the truth behind climate…
It’s certainly possible these miserable celebrities were miserable before they were celebrities.
It may be survival bias in that I remember what I hear and no one reports on the sober celebrity, but it seems like a very fair amount of our richest, most creative, and most lauded persons in this world have their fair share of mental and substance troubles.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#55Wealth = freedom to do what you want. For some people with minimal lifestyles in low cost areas of the US (or living internationally) that can be $30K. I think the series does a good job covering principles such as leverage (software, capital, labour) which are rarely taught in school. Most financial planners only talk about cutting costs, not making more money, because they don't know how... this is the opposite.
> Wealth = freedom to do what you want Once you're wealthy, kind of :) (there are some complications and the fact that often the main limitations of doing what we want are usually not wealth, but not knowing what we'd want the most in the first place, or lacking courage/skill to pursue it) But there's the process of getting wealthy, which can include self-restriction of freedoms...
Possibly.
The wealthiest person I ever dated (he wasn't super wealthy while we were together just doing well, but I just saw him a month ago and he was excited because he CAN retire now but doesn't want to - he's 38) spent TONS of money doing rich people things in the pursuit of wealth, he stretched his bank account very thin over and over doing this.
Going to Sundance, Cannes, Burning Man, TED, etc to network. Spending gobs of money on impressing friends and others he wanted to be friends with. Picking up thousand dollar tabs for groups of people then minorly freaking out the next day.
But spend money to make money. Worked for him. And he got to be super self-indulgent along the way.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#56Saw him for the first time today on Joe Rogan, I've never seen my own ways of thinking reflected so completely in one place.
I think he's wrong on the danger of AI, only because his case seems predicated on AI replicating a human mind and that ML is limited to tightly bounded problems - whereas it overlooks that causing extinction level events or facilitating global slavery are also bounded problems.
Looking forward to reading and hearing more from him.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#57Naval's original tweet storm is really worth reading (as is some of the discussion around it on twitter): https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
Thanks for reposting the source. Lots of great quotes like,
There are no get rich quick schemes. That's just someone else getting rich off you.
The most interesting part for me, however, is discussion of removing the element of luck. Naval doesn't clearly elaborate on this but keeps making assertions that anyone can be deterministically lucky. The only "insight" I could gather is: specialize in something, start business and sell products. Obviously, that's exactly where you need to get lucky: right thing to specialize in, right product to create and run business over long enough duration despite of million failure points.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#58Anyone one of his thousand claims could be an interesting article. For instance "equity is a better way to get rich than working". Is it, I bet the average googler accumulates more wealth than the average start-up founder. Or "how much start-up success is based off luck versus founder?"(from what I've read it's more luck, and if you include the birth luck such as intelligence, energy-levels, focus and health it would…
> I bet the average googler The point is that the average person is not the average Googler. His philosophies are intended for people who aren't lucky enough to be a Googler, or to inherit wealth, etc.
Getting a job at Google is way easier than starting a large successful software company.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#59While I see the point of being financially independent and generating positive-sum wealth, some parts of this argument are bullshit. Most people I have talked to attacking those with lots of money do so because the money gained was made by depriving others of an opportunity to achieve their own wealth. I also disagree with his idea of a journalist reporting for the people being a "status game" and a "nessesscary evil…
> because the money gained was made by depriving others of an opportunity to achieve their own wealth For example?
Just how some criticize Bezos and Zucherburg for building massive fortunes with either terrible workplace practices or the invasion of privacy of millions of people. not all wealth was gained this way, some was gained through honest hard work, diligence, and prudence, but you also can't blame some for being overly cynical about whether most of those with great fortunes did so be committing great crimes.
Re: How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you nailed it with the term "parody" of every piece of self-help advice out there. This post reads like a buzzfeed article "21 ways to get rich". Here's a thousand soundbytes that very aren't actionable or who knows if any of them are right.
Is there any such “how to get rich” advice that IS actionable? Literally all of it I’ve come across suffers from extreme selection bias, and does not account for (or give credit to) luck.
There is one path which is get really good at an in demand skill and figure out how to get paid as much as possible for it, all while spending as little as possible. Basically doing something like becoming a neurosurgeon, or investment bank, etc... This is lower risk, but you're not going to get FU rich.
The other one is find a high risk high reward path like founding startups and then keep on rolling the dice.
There is real estate as well which is somewhere in the middle.
Each path has a lot of specific advice about how to achieve it, but they're all hard and require varing degrees birth luck and blind luck.