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Buy payphones and retire

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Re: Buy payphones and retire

#261

Post by anonzzzies »

mock-possum wrote: post #56
anonzzzies wrote: post #2

Why would I want to retire? I am old and most my friends are boring or died after they retired. Sounds like hell on earth. I like working, it is my hobby and life.

I think the deal is when you retire you no longer have to work. You can spend your time doing whatever you want. If you don’t feel like working today, you don’t have to. If something comes up last minute, you can change your mind. If you want to move to something new and more interesting, you can.

Well, if that is the definition, then i'm retired for almost 25 years now (I sold my first company at 25). But yeah, I saw retiring more as the people I know who retired in the traditional sense; 'now finally we can travel!' and that turns out to be a rather boring and unfulfilling lifestyle. the old (70+) people that are happy and not dead, all work fulltime in their own companies. From my barkeeper (he is 75) to the owner of a 100m euro/year company that makes roofs who is 90 and goes to the factory every day.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#262

Post by tarkin2 »

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…

Reinvesting money from stocks and shares is passive income, right? It's hard to say investing is immoral.

It benefits society if universally adopted, albeit only as a part of an individuals economic activity.

Passive income as the only economic activity doesn't pass the categorical imperative test though: it just creates a stratified hierarchy of owners and workers.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#263

Post by [deleted] »

eru wrote: post #242
aiforecastthway wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, that's just investing. Yes. Investing is passive income. If you have $20M and your lifestyle requires no more than $800K/yr of income taxed a waaaaay lower rates than the working stiffs pay on the same, then a 4% return more than suffices to live off of income that is waaaaay more passive than most passive income frauds even come close to promising. The difference between "investing" and "passive income" is mos…

Why would working men of the world uniting be a disaster for my ETF? Don't the working men need machines and capital to work? > If you have $20M and your lifestyle requires no more than $800K/yr of income taxed a waaaaay lower rates than the working stiffs pay on the same, then a 4% return more than suffices to live off of income that is waaaaay more passive than most passive income frauds even come close to promisin…

[deleted]

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#264

Post by eru »

immibis wrote: post #259
eru wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, feeding an orphan is consumption (not investing), just like buying a yacht with your money. Rich people do these kinds of things all the time.

And it has zero value since the orphan doesn't pay.

Neither does the yacht.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#265

Post by eru »

immibis wrote: post #260
eru wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your point in general, but I doubt the specific one you made. At least for the US. The US ever larger amounts of money per pupil (around $17,280 per pupil annually these days according to the Internet), but educational outcomes haven't really changed much over the decades. Whether you measure that in absolute terms or by international comparison.

Are they investing or just wasting money?

They are certainly trying to.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#266

Post by mxkopy »

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…

As others have stated I don’t believe this is a good faith definition of passive income. What do you do with your time now that you don’t have to work? If you decided to sleep all day and spend money on consumption, I would call you ill. At some point you’ll probably want to do something productive, not because you want to get paid but because that’s just what people tend to do at some point.

I do think a society where this is the only type of work being done is possible. It’s not free money or perpetual motion, just efficient at matching people’s natural inclinations to demand (and automation could fill in the gaps).

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#267

Post by 0xEF »

seizethecheese wrote: post #192
thrance wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how often you hear "put your money to work". Money doesn't work, people do! If you receive a monthly income by doing nothing, you're taking from someone else's work.

> Money doesn't work, people do! Not really true at all. Production is almost always a combination of labor and capital. Consider a restaurant. People are working there but so is a stove, aka capital aka money.

I think you misunderstood what capital is. See, one does not become a Capitalist without taking advantage of others. Most people don't have the initial capital to build the stove and sell it to other Capitalists, so they end up, as in your example, just another piece of equipment doing the actual work in the restaurant alongside the stove. The Capitalist and their money do no actual work, but finance the work being done then profit from it with stolen wages and artificial inflation, which is why your steak costs you, the customer, $15 USD to enjoy when the reality is it took a collective $5 to actually produce.

So the original reply is correct; money does not work, people do.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#268

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#269

Post by whatusername »

Fun thing with payphones - at least in Australia -- Telstra is investing in upgrading them (at least the ones in the cities). They aren't very useful as phones - but they are incredibly well situated billboards that you can plaster ads on top of.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/first-came-the-giant-adv...

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#270

Post by TeMPOraL »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #212
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I think that is the crux of it. You are using social programs designed to keep a roof over people’s head for financial gain.

If the social program was designed to keep a roof over people’s head, then it would simply give people cash, or a roof. The fact that the social program involves extending lines of credit means that the design was not to keep a roof over people’s head, but rather enrich existing asset owners and indebt future ones to get them chained to the treadmill. Similar to cutting funding for higher education and replacing it w…

> If the social program was designed to keep a roof over people’s head, then it would simply give people cash, or a roof.

Except it wouldn't happen, because it would get killed by even louder whining about giving free money to the lazy do-littles. Every social program has to have a layer of appeasing the people who only feel they're part of a society when it benefits them.

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