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How to get rich without getting lucky

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Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#121

I’m going to take a contrarian view and say: figure out why you want to be rich, first. For most people, money is a proxy for respect, status, power, security, social skills, romantic attraction from others, free time, or otherwise. If you can ignore the constant “only rich people are meaningful human beings” message that is blared 24/7 from western culture, you might find that it’s easier to just go after what you w…

Here is a list of reasons that "enlightened" (i.e. not scrooge) people would want to be rich: - The ability to secure the best medical care for yourself and your family in a country where this takes money to do. - The ability to walk away from abusive employment relationships without a second thought or any stress. - The ability to engage in high-level economic actions, the kind that aren't designed for your failure.…

I would also add: The ability to live in a nice family home in a nice neighborhood. Which is on track to become prohibitively expensive in most places.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#122

Is Naval rich? I think the most valuable advice in getting rich is from people who are moderately rich. Advice from people who aren’t rich is stupid. Advice from billionaires seems irrelevant because their circumstances are so exceptional. How did the friend of a friend make $20million ... there’s an interesting question. I could give you advice on how to not get rich.... just make what are in hindsight a constant fl…

He was pushed out of the startup he co-founded (Epinions) and walked away with very little. He then sued the the VCs [1], leading to an out-of-court settlement, and used that settlement money to start AngelList.

So he went from being not-rich 10 years ago, to being very rich now due to his success with AngelList and related investments.

I think the advice he shares in this post is consistent with how he's built his own success. Both Naval and his brother, Kamal, have long been writing and speaking about concepts like stoicism, mindfulness and other techniques for developing good judgement and emotional health, so it's likely these ideas were imparted via their family and have influenced their thinking for a long time.

[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/02/06/naval-ravikant-of-ang...

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in country which has generous welfare system (scandinavian countries). Here I think people have all the basic needs pretty much covered. You can only get your things messed up if you get hooked up on drugs or alcohol. Though to me living here it seems that people are still all the time complaining and demanding more and more, though we have more safety nets than about any other place on earth.

This has a flipside though. If you do manage to find success (and say, own a profitable business or have an exit), you'll be taxed into oblivion. It might not be the popular opinion on HN, but I would hate that. Make sure to structure things properly from the beginning so that you can leave when appropriate.

I guess it might slow you down from getting surpr super rich, but in the end it's surely worth it.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#124

I’m going to take a contrarian view and say: figure out why you want to be rich, first. For most people, money is a proxy for respect, status, power, security, social skills, romantic attraction from others, free time, or otherwise. If you can ignore the constant “only rich people are meaningful human beings” message that is blared 24/7 from western culture, you might find that it’s easier to just go after what you w…

Reminds me of this quote, can't remember by whom (maybe Tim Ferris?) something along the lines of: "You don't really want a million dollars; what you really want is the kind of life that you think you need a million dollars to have"

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#125

I got rich in Silicon Valley from my equity compensation. I bounced around various companies and startups. Two of them were successful and had public offerings. Of those two, one was spectacularly successful. Sure, luck played a role. But my pure grit and tenacity also played a role. Taking on hard bugs and solving them played a role: I solved a lot of hard bugs that others couldn't solve. Spending Saturday afternoon…

Sorry, but it's a bit rich when people who literally won the lottery call for hard work. The reality is you got lucky. There were probably many people who worked harder than you and saved more than you who will never enjoy anything close to your success.

And that's okay.

All wealth is based on luck or coercion (really, just coercion). This is trivially true if you understand what wealth is: claims on the labor-time of others. Since most people aren't in the habit of freely giving away such claims in order to accumulate such claims you either need a gun or you need to stumble upon something that other people need so much they'll surrender their labor-time -- literally they're time on earth -- for. I say stumble upon because presumably when you were born you didn't "own" much of anything. (And yes, to complete the analysis, the only thing that prevents others from simply seizing whatever it is you've lucked into is somebody else has guns and stops them in return for a cut. It's coercion all the way down.)

And that's okay. While capitalism doesn't alter the essential nature of wealth -- it's not magic -- it does strongly incentivize those with wealth to try and accumulate more wealth. Capital demands to be put to work immediately, always, 24/7, to acquire more capital.

If you understand this then it should be clear the article is silly and there are and there will always be only three ways to get "rich" (which again, just means to accumulate labor claims).

1. Be lucky.

2. Get some guns, some men, and declare that you are now rich. (This is what people mean when they say sovereigns can "print money" or that sovereigns cannot default. The wealth of sovereigns is structurally inherent. As Keynes might say, a sovereign is wealth, that is, it is labor claims.)

3. Go to work for those who are already wealthy and make their lives better, that is literally make "the rich richer."

The article rambles and uses a lot of silly words to say #3. And while the author may mention society understand that whatever you want to do "for society" will require you begging for capital from rich guys like the author.

When I explain this to bold young college students who are very hesitant to go to work for the "Man" (in finance or law) it always leaves them very depressed. To lighten the mood a bit I will say this: not all capital is subject to free, anonymous exchange (the logic of the market). This is the key insight of Marx: there are relations that can produce wealth (labor claims) that do not require price signals. Which is just a fancy of way of saying you can actually make yourself quite wealthy without buying/selling anything. (Unless you're one of those insane Randroids who believe when a mother sings to her newborn baby she is somehow profiting from the "exchange.") The interesting thing about what Marxists would call such "non-reified" capital is that it can have tremendous though hard to measure effects and it can operate at global scale eg open source software and many world religions.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#126
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a list of reasons that "enlightened" (i.e. not scrooge) people would want to be rich: - The ability to secure the best medical care for yourself and your family in a country where this takes money to do. - The ability to walk away from abusive employment relationships without a second thought or any stress. - The ability to engage in high-level economic actions, the kind that aren't designed for your failure.…

Assuming that "rich" means "don't need to work at all, for the rest of your life, to keep a roof over your head and food on your table," none of what you listed require being rich. > The ability to secure the best medical care for yourself and your family in a country where this takes money to do. I can only speak to the US but this is much more an insurance issue than a wealth issue. When I made $30k a year I had a…

> I can only speak to the US but this is much more an insurance issue than a wealth issue. When I made $30k a year I had a ~$75k surgery and it cost me about $1200 all in, including follow-up copays with the surgeon, because I had good insurance through my employer. I probably had $15k in credit card debt at the time and rented a $400/mo room in someone else's house - certainly not rich by any stretch.

This isn't rich. Rich is the ability to direct people to research life extension and disease prevention. It's to be able to have access to the newest techniques and best doctor, regardless of world location.

It's the ability to have a sick child with 24/7 doctors and only worry about the child.

Rich is the ability to buy an island and create a clone army of yourself, using that army to construct the largest ai supercomputer the world has ever seen, then solving aging and disease ultimately merging with the machine, redefining and extending what it means to be human.

Err sorry wrong thread.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#127

I’m going to take a contrarian view and say: figure out why you want to be rich, first. For most people, money is a proxy for respect, status, power, security, social skills, romantic attraction from others, free time, or otherwise. If you can ignore the constant “only rich people are meaningful human beings” message that is blared 24/7 from western culture, you might find that it’s easier to just go after what you w…

Here is a list of reasons that "enlightened" (i.e. not scrooge) people would want to be rich: - The ability to secure the best medical care for yourself and your family in a country where this takes money to do. - The ability to walk away from abusive employment relationships without a second thought or any stress. - The ability to engage in high-level economic actions, the kind that aren't designed for your failure.…

Actually, an "enlightened" person most likely wouldn't care about those factors. They'd be happy with a hut in the woods, depending on donations or foraging for food.

But as yayana points out, none of those factors depend on being rich in well run countries. (There are alternatives to the scandinavian models with a bit less nanny state that also achieve all of those factors, but the Scandinavian countries are the most famous for letting you not care about medical care and bad employers.)

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#128
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space is a concept from math which basically means dimensions. It's just a fancy way of saying "there are more career opportunities now because of internet".

Or, probably more accurately, mathematicians borrowed the analogy of space to describe sets.

This was funny! I recognize these conflicting views. The first is the view that math is a fundamental force governing nature. The second is that math is simply a way to describe the forces of nature. I tend to agree with the second view and are often dragged into arguments which has the roots in this difference of viewpoints.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#129

Naval's always sounded a bit like a Facebook quote bot to me. He reiterates common knowledge in less concise ways than normally said while using the persona of a monk. ...Actually, that can sum up a lot of Tech Twitter.

I once heard PG say something like "It's crazy, but the YC startups that succeeded are the ones who followed our advice. The ones who failed, didn't".

He's never claimed there's anything particularly brilliant about his advice. Indeed he's joked that his presence in office hours sessions could be replaced by a 3-line shell script. "Make something people want", "talk to your users", "spend less money than you make"... that's pretty much it.

I think most of the really good VCs would be similarly modest about the value of their advice.

The principles are really simple and easy to convey.

The hard part is actually doing it.

Re: How to get rich without getting lucky

#130
post #75

"Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep." If you are earning wealth while you sleep, it must be coming from somewhere. Either it is illusory (eg interest, which is cancelled by inflation), or it is being generated by other people working. "Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible." Thus, this statement is dubious in the context of "wealth while you sleep".

Paying people to work for you is unethical?

Some would argue that if you make a profit from it, then yes it is unethical.

If worker A makes product P, and you sell product P for $1000. And then you pay worker A $800 for the work, you make $200 profit.

Worker A did $1000 worth of work, but only got paid $800. You did $0 worth of work (with regards to actually making P) but you got $200.

Hence it is unethical.

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