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How People Get Rich Now

paulgraham.com

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Re: How People Get Rich Now

#791

Post by WalterBright »

bumby wrote: post #748
WalterBright wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're way up on others if you actually invest in your theories. Congratulations! But I do suggest caution. A strategy that works for 3 years may not play out well over 10, 20, 30 years. Yeah, I know I wrote "everybody knows". I meant "it is generally known".

I appreciate the advice. While I’ve only been investing this way for about 11-12 years, back testing has been statistically valid to the early 2000s (limited by the availability of index funds for comparison). You’re right though, who knows if it’ll work in 30 years. There’s some evidence that it may based on trends in institutional investing. That enough uncertainty to avoid putting all my eggs in that basket.

> early 2000s

I got hammered really hard by the 2000 crash. Down something like 75%. I thought I was smart by not investing in bubble stocks. But the secondary die-off caught me. It was a bitter pill.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#792

Post by hnick »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #712
jdgoesmarching wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Maybe unpopular opinion, but entrepreneur insights from CEOs are rarely valuable because no individual contribution outweighs sheer luck. Every day millions of people make smart decisions, take good risks, and work hard without significantly improving their conditions. It is pure survivorship bias to think individuals are capable of more than slightly nudging the cosmic needle if it happens to land near the r…

I recall the 1999 tech bubble. Lots of companies went under in the crash that might have made it today. There is a ton of VC money in Sillicon Valley again.

So where is that VC money getting spent besides salaries? What's the modern equivalent of selling shovels to the miners? AWS?

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#793

Post by WalterBright »

refenestrator wrote: post #776
WalterBright wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stockholders can revolt. If they don't, and it's their money being handed to the CEO, is it reasonable for non-stockholders to gripe about it?

We're all stockholders, and anyone with a 401k is, by way of Vanguard and Blackrock.

So don't invest in corporations who you believe overpay their CEO.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#794

Post by greedo »

WalterBright wrote: post #737
greedo wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook. Compared to Steve Jobs, Cook is milquetoast. He's fantastic at supply chain management, and milking existing products/services. He's exactly what stockholders have wanted for a CEO after the Jobs died. Someone to basically do the same thing for decades. Milk the iPhone for all it's worth. Yes, I know he's introduce the Watch and AirPods. But he also introduced the HomePod. He's no tech visionary, and eventu…

Do you really believe Cook is just warming a seat? There's a lot more to running Apple than being a visionary. I'm an Apple shareholder since before Cook, and admit I was skeptical about Cook. But as a shareholder I'm very happy with Cook's leadership. If his compensation is $$$$, that's cool with me. BTW, Jobs was a visionary, sure. But that wasn't enough - he nearly wrecked Apple through mismanagement. Next Inc. bo…

I don't own any stocks directly, I prefer index funds. But I've owned Apple hardware since 1984, so perhaps I've invested in Apple through side channels.

I'm sure Apple shareholders are happy with Cook's leadership. AAPL has done very very well in the last 20 years. But is that due to Cook, or is that inherent in being CEO of a company that created the iPhone? Would Scott Forstall have been as effective in driving the stock price higher had Tim stayed as COO?

Imagine Apple today without the iPhone. It would still be a 2nd tier personal computer manufacturer with a recognizable design aesthetic. But everything that makes Apple the trillion dollar gorilla stems from the iPhone. Not only the outsized profits from selling 200m units a year, but without the iPhone, there's no iPad. No watch (same cpu designs). And no M1 Macs to boost sales to 2x the previous year. All stemming from a bet Apple made in 2004.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#795

Post by int_19h »

oconnor663 wrote: post #779
mike00632 wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ongoing curiosity of mine. One really cool example is Mubarak of Egypt who became wealthy from corruption. When he lost power he had some wealth exposed and he was richer than any known person in the world. https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/11/egyptia... It's very likely that the richest person in the world right now is Vladimir Putin.

At some point I guess you run into definitional questions around what counts as wealth or ownership. If you could seize any building in your country at will, do you own all of them? What if you could probably only size a few dozen before people started getting angry about it? Etc.

The same goes for stock, though. When we talk about billionaires, most of that money is invested somewhere. So nominally it's worth $X because it's N shares worth $Y each; but if they try to sell them all off rapidly, that would drive the price down. Finding enough buyers might also get tricky.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#796

Post by int_19h »

CameronNemo wrote: post #658
mmmmmbop wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: Do you have any more background on this? Who are these rich people that are not listed in Forbes?

I've never looked at that list so I have no idea who is on it. Is there a reason I care who the richest people on earth are?

To become the richest people on Earth, they have to collect economic rent from the actual producers of wealth, which is all the rest of us. Wouldn't you want to know who is being unfairly enriched by your labor?

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#797

Post by int_19h »

shlep21 wrote: post #758
adwn wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hm? That paragraph is accurate. No, the assumptions in it are ridiculous in context: 1) "You could probably work twice as many hours as a corporate employee" : Okay, maybe you can "work" 80 hours a week, as in "be in the office 80 hours per week". 2) "if you focus you can probably get three times as much done in an hour" : No. You can't stay focused for 11.5 hours a day, especially not 7 days in a row, especially e…

No. You can't stay focused for 11.5 hours a day, especially not 7 days in a row, especially especially not week after week after week. I'm a former software engineer. The best engineers absolutely, genuinely can work very long hours and remain productive. 80 hrs/week might be a bit high, but 65 hours a week at 3x average-programmer-productivity is definitely something that exists in the real world, and although it is…

Lots of HN readers are familiar with things like burnout from personal experience at FAANG.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#798

Post by greggman3 »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #727
jdgoesmarching wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Maybe unpopular opinion, but entrepreneur insights from CEOs are rarely valuable because no individual contribution outweighs sheer luck. Every day millions of people make smart decisions, take good risks, and work hard without significantly improving their conditions. It is pure survivorship bias to think individuals are capable of more than slightly nudging the cosmic needle if it happens to land near the r…

> It makes people uncomfortable to think that success is mostly a matter of luck. I constantly hear this sentiment and don't think it makes people uncomfortable at all. If anything it is the opposite, people cling to this idea to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own situation. What makes people far more uncomfortable is the nagging feeling that success isn't mostly a matter of luck. Success is a choice…

> finish high school, don't have kids before marriage, don't do drugs or smoke, minimise alcohol, eat healthy and exercise, don't buy things to impress others,

none of these correlate at all with the successful people I know.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#799

Post by timoth3y »

I used to really enjoy PG's articles, but these days he seems to be trying to publicly talk himself into something he already believes.

His conclusions jumped out at me:

> You would think, after having been on the side of labor in its fight with capital for almost two centuries, that the far left would be happy that labor has finally prevailed. But none of them seem to be. You can almost hear them saying "No, no, not that way."

There may be some assumptions under which this makes sense, but they are not expressed in the article.

The power of labor in terms of pay, working conditions, political influence, or any measure I can think of is at a 50-year low in the US. And since labor makes up the vast majority of jobs, it's not just the "far left" who needs to be concerned about them.

Being able to raise money from a capitalist (venture or otherwise) who will then own part of the enterprise is pretty much the definition of capitalism. It's a good thing, but the success of capitalism is not automatically a victory for labor.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#800

Post by [deleted] »

missedthecue wrote: post #747
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either you don't think modern CEO pay is a problem, or you think it's a problem because it makes shareholders poorer. The fact that you appear to be completely blind to the third option - the actual issue - is far more telling than any argument you've made so far.

My argument eliminated the third option. It doesn't hold water.

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