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‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

dariusforoux.com

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Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#11

Post by spywaregorilla »

schwartzworld wrote: post #8
rufus_foreman wrote: post #6

>> Person A was born in 1930. Person B was born seventy years later, in 2000. They both start applying the Graham investing strategy at a very early age, let’s say when they were 15 years. >> Person A becomes Warren Buffett, once the richest man on earth, who experienced one of the biggest booms in value stocks when he was young. Person B loses half of their money because value stocks are out of favor in the 2010s Bu…

> 97.8 billion dollars, 97.5 billion or so of that was earned after he was 50 years old. To think he started off with a paltry $300 million. How much avocado toast do I need to not eat to get there?

If you can expel negative avacado toasts from your body and sell them for $17, ignoring sales labor costs, about -18M.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#12

Post by zehaeva »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #9
schwartzworld wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 97.8 billion dollars, 97.5 billion or so of that was earned after he was 50 years old. To think he started off with a paltry $300 million. How much avocado toast do I need to not eat to get there?

He didn't start off with it. That was after 40 years of investing. By the time he was 21 he was up to $20,000.

That's the equivalent of ~$240k in today's dollars!

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#13

Post by sylens »

sokoloff wrote: post #7

The flying private example in the first section misses the entire point (or 99% of the point) of flying private. Flying on a set schedule, arranged long in advance, with 30 strangers, from one major airport to another major airport, is not the point of flying private. Flying on your own schedule, to/from more conveniently located airports, bringing family pets along, having private conversations among the pax, having…

Isn't that what the author was saying though? These "affordable" private jets were really not providing the perks of a private jet; they were essentially just chartering a standard plane.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#14

Post by pessimizer »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #6

>> Person A was born in 1930. Person B was born seventy years later, in 2000. They both start applying the Graham investing strategy at a very early age, let’s say when they were 15 years. >> Person A becomes Warren Buffett, once the richest man on earth, who experienced one of the biggest booms in value stocks when he was young. Person B loses half of their money because value stocks are out of favor in the 2010s Bu…

> you should have a pretty high rate of success.

I'm pretty sure that multiple orders of magnitude more people spent their entire lives trying to become extremely rich than the few hundred it worked out for.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#15

Post by amelius »

sokoloff wrote: post #5

For me, rich and unknown would be way, way better than rich and famous. Even financially comfortable and unknown is better than rich and famous.

I think that depends on how you became rich and famous.

E.g. if you found the cure to cancer ...

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#16

Post by rufus_foreman »

zehaeva wrote: post #12
rufus_foreman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't start off with it. That was after 40 years of investing. By the time he was 21 he was up to $20,000.

That's the equivalent of ~$240k in today's dollars!

>> In 1945, as a high school sophomore, Buffett and a friend spent $25 to purchase a used pinball machine, which they placed in the local barber shop. Within months, they owned several machines in three different barber shops across Omaha. They sold the business later in the year for $1,200

That's ~$20k in today's dollars in a few months while still in high school.

>> At 15, Warren made more than $175 monthly delivering Washington Post newspapers

~$3k a month in today's dollars.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#17

Post by pessimizer »

sokoloff wrote: post #5

For me, rich and unknown would be way, way better than rich and famous. Even financially comfortable and unknown is better than rich and famous.

> Even financially comfortable and unknown is better than rich and famous.

This is true for the vast majority of people. Our problem is that we allow the bizarre outliers for whom this is not true to run everything.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#18

Post by stavros »

sokoloff wrote: post #7

The flying private example in the first section misses the entire point (or 99% of the point) of flying private. Flying on a set schedule, arranged long in advance, with 30 strangers, from one major airport to another major airport, is not the point of flying private. Flying on your own schedule, to/from more conveniently located airports, bringing family pets along, having private conversations among the pax, having…

If you're getting chauffeured around on a set schedule with 99 strangers, you're in a bus.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#19

Post by pessimizer »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #2

> Once we let go of outcomes, we can look inward and focus on the things that truly matter: To become a good person with values, who has character, and is good at what they do. That’s the biggest reward in life. And it’s 100% in your own hands. As if this wasn't some programmed delusion. There never was a time when people acted normally and then were corrupted by some new thing. Pretending civilization is normal inst…

> media isn't an actor, its a mirror.

No, media is not a platonic abstraction, it's like 20 companies, tops, with public chains of command. It's not the emergent expression of the collective unconscious.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#20

Post by hindsightbias »

sylens wrote: post #13
sokoloff wrote: post #7

The flying private example in the first section misses the entire point (or 99% of the point) of flying private. Flying on a set schedule, arranged long in advance, with 30 strangers, from one major airport to another major airport, is not the point of flying private. Flying on your own schedule, to/from more conveniently located airports, bringing family pets along, having private conversations among the pax, having…

Isn't that what the author was saying though? These "affordable" private jets were really not providing the perks of a private jet; they were essentially just chartering a standard plane.

He’s saying that because he thinks they want to brag.

But there’s a completely 100% rational reason for doing it that he completely ignores. Given the choice of going to a destination for the same price (or at least “affordable”), would you A) fly commercial B) fly private?

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