Golden Rules for Making Money (1880) • Hacker News Board

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#161

Post by dave_sullivan » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #39

dave_sullivan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the means of production pretty much people's minds at this point? I'd like to own and control mine.

A semiconductor fab costs several billion dollars. Rollout of a national communications network still costs even more. The world is still full of big lumps of capital that aren't going away any time soon.

Agreed, and I'd be in favor of those being financed at least partly by the government and offered "at cost" because it lowers barriers to entry for new participants. I'd also include drug research, roads, housing in areas without a housing shortage (IE, not SF or Manhattan), and more. I even think the idea of a living wage makes sense and in fact will be necessary, I just haven't figured out how to pay for it (and frankly, the naive implementation of "just give everyone $X" would be so hugely expensive that it strikes me as infeasible. A working implementation is going to need to be significantly more... creative.)

And yet, the big stories of the last decade or two have noted a trend: more value being generated by fewer people with fewer capital expenditures (prime example being MSFT > Google > Facebook > Instagram/Whatsapp/Minecraft). The majority of "capital" in those cases (VC money, if applicable) is spent on engineering salaries.

Meanwhile, oil companies are dying, communication networks are barely profitable (cisco?), and "hard industry" is an industry no one optimizing for profitability wants to get into unless it's to break it up and sell it off. Of course you can point to the recently ended energy bonanza during which Exxon became the most valuable company in the world; explaining the drivers of that is beyond the scope of this comment but it's not about energy being a fundamentally awesome business to be in (but briefly, BRIC growth + monopolistic practices to really juice income).

So the interplay between brain capital, industrial equipment, and various other types of capital is more complex than "the public should own the means of production". Some of it yes, most of it no. And I'd argue the brain capital trend is going to continue while heavy industry jobs are going to keep disappearing, forcing us to resolve the "interplay between capital" question in a way that doesn't collapse our entire economy, doesn't cause a civil war (and/or avoids one), and doesn't end up with the public (or a small group calling themselves "the public") being able to shake down any success story simply because they figured out how to make more money than the next guy.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#162

Post by Retra » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

StephenConnell wrote: post #142

Retra wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could, but you should be aware that "stealing" is not an act per se, but a moral qualification of some other act. Namely, the redistribution of goods. The only difference between theft and charity is your personal moral inflection.

A couple more definitions from Google. Charity: voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need. Stealing: to take without permission I am an advocate for charity. But redistribution through taxation feels like stealing to me.

Redistribution through taxation feels like charity to me. Here's to kicker: why should anybody care about your feelings if they are wrong? Or if they only serve yourself?

If there's a good reason to think that redistributing wealth will improve people's ability to mitigate risk and make good decisions, then your feeling would really be irrational and should be ignored.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#163

Post by tomp » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #147

tomp wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which accounting trick?

There are many. To name a few: synthetic CDOs (the 2008 mortgage crisis), insider trading (Martha Stewart), rate rigging (LIBOR scandal), Ponzi schemes (Madoff) and straight up cooking the books (Enron). I hope that's enough to refresh your memory? It's irrelevant to my original point though as capitalism is by definition hoping to get something from doing nothing (or making money work as the propagandists like to dr…

Apart from Enron, the rest have little to do with capitalism but mostly to do with markets (or, more precisely, our fucked-up financial institutions and deficient financial regulations).

> It's irrelevant to my original point though as capitalism is by definition hoping to get something from doing nothing

You have to be really stupid to think that, and deny all the benefits to our society that capitalism enables. Or, could you please explain how you would e.g. start an airline, or build a hospital, or your house's sewage system, without utilizing capital?

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#164

Post by WavingThe44 » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

77pt77 wrote: post #114

WavingThe44 wrote: post #30

From Frenzied Finance (1905): First, there is a fundamental law, from which no one—neither the great nor the small—is exempt. In substance it is: "Every 'Standard Oil' man must wear the 'Standard Oil' collar." This collar is riveted on to each one as he is taken into "the band," and can only be removed with the head of the wearer. Here is the code. The penalty for infringing the following rules is instant "removal."…

> 5. Never put "Standard Oil" trades in writing This is good advice?

The list (and book) was written by a guy who suffered from his financial dealings with Standard Oil and he is essentially explaining how they were able to get him over the barrel. It is a very cynical list.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#165

Post by gdubs » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

tmd wrote: post #145

A lot of old-school financial advice seems to focus on the importance of saving and avoidance of debt. It seems reasonable but I always wonder how applicable that is in the modern times with our record-low interest rates. Short look at the tables in [1] suggests that, for example, you could gen 5% after-tax real returns on government bonds in the 19 century. Today, that would be unthinkable. [1] http://efinance.org.c…

Low interest rates make saving and debt avoidance even more important, since you can't rely as heavily on the market to grow your savings.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#166

Post by fit2rule » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

mclovinit wrote: post #128

fit2rule wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the great western habits I inherited after living in the US for 15 years, is the use of the credit card for everything, and then just paying a single bill (the credit card) every month. If you do it properly, it can really increase the quality of your life - rewards, points, etc. - and it can also be very, very dangerous for the undisciplined and income-averse ..

For those I know, including myself and my partner, the habit to strive for is spending less, and I agree that credit can be a useful tool if used wisely, but never really know when life can throw a curve ball. For now, we use credit cards, but manage to eliminate our debt by paying everything soon after incurring debt. Call it using debt for leverage I suppose. For any big purchase (which is rare), we aim to use cred…

The #1 rule is, stay cash-positive: don't spend more than you've got in the bank to cover the bills, but be willing to defer the payment and continue income in the interim, because .. after all .. nothing feels better than having all bills paid and still having a net positive every month, to save away ..

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#167

Post by fit2rule » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

flexie wrote: post #125

fit2rule wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the great western habits I inherited after living in the US for 15 years, is the use of the credit card for everything, and then just paying a single bill (the credit card) every month. If you do it properly, it can really increase the quality of your life - rewards, points, etc. - and it can also be very, very dangerous for the undisciplined and income-averse ..

the income-averse; I have yet to meet those. work-averse or income-challenged maybe. Or underpaid or poor.

By income-averse, I mean those who are averse to generating the incoming required to pay the current bills, and alas this is a subtle but simple difference between solvency and debt. I never really carried much debt, between payments. But I sure did borrow a lot, to cover my monthly budget.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#168

Post by solidsnack9000 » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 8:38 PM UTC

kjksf wrote: post #40

clishem wrote: post #21

The author of 'So Good They Can't Ignore you' ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-can... ) basically argues that the first rule he mentions ("Don't mistake your vocation") is a false myth: "In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice. Not only is the cliché flawed-preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how mos…

"Don't mistake your vocation" doesn't mean "follow your passion". Paraphrasing, it means "do what you you're naturally good at" "Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed".

Being good at something and being enthusiastic about it are not at all the same thing.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#169

Post by switch007 » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 8:43 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #60

switch007 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMW fan here! (To an extent). BMWs have their flaws (buy a 15+ year old E46, I dare you), but damn, it feels much more like they thought things through. Nothing in the interior of my E46 annoyed me. I've driven the F30 as hire cars many times and love it. However, I drove a 2015 Mercedes E-class for 3 days last week...: - The parking brake is a PEDAL and the release is a totally separate lever. - The button to disabl…

> The parking brake is a PEDAL and the release is a totally separate lever. That has two functions in one go: first of all it stops your potentially deranged passengers from pulling on the handbrake and second it allows for much more force to be applied to the pedal than you could ever achieve while pulling on a lever. This means that if you need the parking brake for it's backup emergency brake function it will like…

Some valid points, but I was mostly commenting in the context of it being a rental and expecting a car to be like other cars.

> ...the same as it would be in some other EU cars

"some" (which, out of interest)?. Not anywhere near being a majority e.g. BMW, Audi, Ford, VW

> Similar to the speedometer erring on the side of caution.

I can do that. I can set it to 119 instead of 120. Leave me in control (OK, it's the cruise control feature, but still...)

Again, the parking pedal is unique(?) to Mercedes. Completely different to expected location and behaviour to most other cars.

Re: Golden Rules for Making Money (1880)

#170

Post by oskrim » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

BWStearns wrote: post #123

flyinglizard wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a completely different matter between learning from theory and learning in practice. What's sorely missing from theoretical teaching is context - knowing when and how to apply this knowledge - and the actual experience of using it, which is critical to remembering what was taught. From my experience on this planet, purely theoretical teachings tend to be forgotten in favor of things you've actually used and done…

This logic always sounds good but I have a hard time really placing times when even in retrospect I lacked some wisdom from doing in order to apply the theory. I've had plenty of times where I lacked both the theory and the scraped elbows (creating shared state clusterfucks that seemed clever at the time), and times when I was missing the theory alone (mechanically reaching for the OO hammer because there was a nail-…

I think what flyinglizard had in mind were fields where learning occurs through theory first and foremost, and only secondarily through practice. Software obviously is a craft where the act of implementing is really the major part, and thus you are by default learning through practice with theoretical studying being the exception.

Now consider the math courses you take at college for example. Here the important part is to learn and understand deeply abstract concepts, but then you explicitly need to practice in order to tie them together so you are actually able to use this knowledge.

I think both aspects of assimilating knowledge are absolutely crucial in all domains, but often one of them is naturally the default, while the other requires some effort.