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Buy payphones and retire

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Re: Buy payphones and retire

#231

Post by samatman »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #225
kdmccormick wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your parallel to rent seeking. Rent seeking is indeed both (a) arguably immoral and (b) seemingly inescapable in a society which respects property rights. The theory of Georgism [1] suggests a way that we could eliminate rent seeking: by taxing ownership of all common resources at the value of the rent they would demand. That way, property owners, telephone operators, etc. would be rewarded for their lab…

Rent seeking is not immoral. You own something. You choose to let others use it for a fee per month or per day. Some other person voluntarily thinks your deal is good and agrees to pay to use your something. Sure, you can come up with some obscure examples of rent seeking being immoral, like charging a dehydrated dying person $1000 per glass of water, but that's not what we're discussing here. If you disagree, let's…

You're misinformed. You're describing rental, it's an understandable mistake, but despite the shared etymology, rent seeking is something entirely different.

It is by definition any scheme which extracts wealth without providing value. Renting apartments, or equipment, is not rent seeking. Putting a barrier in a river and refusing to allow passage of cargo without a tax, that, is rent seeking.

If you agree with me that a scheme to extract the wealth of others, while providing no value in return, is immoral, then rent seeking is, in fact, immoral.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#232

Post by dleink »

bongodongobob wrote: post #30
dleink wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things I love are broader than "IP controlled by my company." I can see that if the thing you love is massive financial institutions or defense contracting or something?

Maybe he's a helicopter mechanic or a million other things you can't just do at home.

Most of the things I love aren't done at home. I already noted there are passions that can't be performed individually.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#233

Post by dleink »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #95
dleink wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things I love are broader than "IP controlled by my company." I can see that if the thing you love is massive financial institutions or defense contracting or something?

Or, you know, you're a specialist who worked their way into a career at anything that produces hardware. Philips, Samsung, heaven forbid you work for a larger corporation, how many of those people can there possibly be, right?

You have won. Yes, if the thing you love specifically requires the collection of capital then of course, you will have difficulty finding that outside a corporation.

I suspect with analysis this is not the case for the majority of folks.

Hardware is a funny example though, because I feel it's easier than ever to get some interesting hardware stuff going.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#235

Post by ipsum2 »

andrewla wrote: post #57

The concept of "passive income" is almost a scissor concept. Or maybe only if you couple it with the categorical imperitive. On the one hand, it's so obviously true that it would be great to have passive income. Draw the salary you're drawing now, with some growth, and not have to work. On the other hand, if everyone had access to this capability then society and civilization would grind to a halt. People make things…

What is a "scissor concept"? Google returns no results.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#236

Post by jayd16 »

schmidtleonard wrote: post #128
jayd16 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more people will lose than win. It's not necessarily zero sum. If money is invested to produce value instead of simply moving it around then everyone can benefit.

Yes, though it's important to note that the economic notion of value is weighted according to wealth and therefore more than a bit weird. Feeding an orphan creates no "value" because they have no money to pay you with, while merging companies into a mega-monopoly that can shake down the rest of the economy creates loads of "value" because it pays rich investors huge dividends. Of course, there are plenty of honest wa…

I think people understand that, for example, investing in schools generates more value than you put in.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#237

Post by csomar »

crooked-v wrote: post #40
hyperhopper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are there so few? And containing such a small variety of goods? In Japan anywhere from a busy subway to a remote park, there will be rows of vending machines everywhere, with more varieties of sodas, coffees, soups, ice creams, candies, hell even clothes or meat! And those are just the common types. You're never far from what you want in an automated fashion. Why are we so behind in America when there seemin…

There are many huge contextual differences between the US and Japan when it comes to vending machines, but the most obvious one is that Japan is eminently walkable, while the US is so pedestrian-unfriendly that there's no guarantee that people will even be around your row of vending machines in the first place.

Everyone is complicating their answer. The answer is simple: In the US, these machines will get cracked and the ROI will be negative. Same reason why Amazon Go didn't work.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#238

Post by ainiriand »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #47

When I was a kid, we stole a payphone. Those bastards are tough . We whacked on it for an hour, with a 15-lb sledgehammer. When it finally broke open, it yielded about $1.50.

Funny story of my youth: When the first payphones with digital terminal were introduced, I found that you could access the operator menu, that was password protected. For months I checked different combinations of those 5 secret numbers at different terminals after school, in a sequential order. One day I was in.

Inside the operator menu you could check how much money there was inside the machine, you could make free calls, but you could not take the money out. I never managed to take the money out without violence.

So I signed a mobile phone contract that gave you some call minutes the more calls you received (it was a hit back then, I think from Vodafone), and called myself repeatedly from phone to phone.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#239

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

andrewla wrote: post #57

The concept of "passive income" is almost a scissor concept. Or maybe only if you couple it with the categorical imperitive. On the one hand, it's so obviously true that it would be great to have passive income. Draw the salary you're drawing now, with some growth, and not have to work. On the other hand, if everyone had access to this capability then society and civilization would grind to a halt. People make things…

[dead]

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#240

Post by Zanni »

I worked as a telephone operator a couple of summers and pay phones were a pain in the ass. The protocol for a long-distance call (and this was back when long distance was expensive, up to to a couple of dollars/minute), you'd collect for three minutes up front and refund if they went under. If the call went longer, the caller was expected to stay on the line and pay the balance, which could be considerable. Often they just bailed. There was one exchange near a military base where we'd have to handle lengthy long-distance calls from lovesick/homesick recruits, and so many of them bailed out at the end of call that we took to breaking in every three minutes to collect more coins. Worst part of the job.
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