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Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

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Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#21

Post by edw519 »

2 quick stories:

1. My fraternity brother's father (a successful doctor) took the two of us out to dinner. He asked what I was studying. I told him computers. He said, "Good. As you know, I want John to study medicine. But if he didn't want to, I would want him to pursue computers. But definitely not law. I don't want my son spending the rest of his life chasing dollars." Strange remark. But somehow, it really left an impression on me. I've always wanted to have fun and make a difference, but never wanted to be like so many business people I've encountered whose sole purpose seems to be the pursuit of money for its own sake.

2. My mentor and first co-founder on the subject of money: "It's never about the money. And it's certainly not about us. Our first, second, and third responsibilities are making sure our customers get what they need. That being said, it we earn a lot of money in the process, what's so bad about that?"

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#22

Post by andrewfelix »

retube wrote: post #11
masenghi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. HFT and Domain squatting are legal.

HFT: provides liquidity and increases market efficiency (suppresses pricing inconsistencies) Domain squatting: allows market to set the value of a domain. Not sure what's wrong with either of these, or why they are any worse than any other business that seeks to take advantage of market inefficiencies or speculate on asset prices (after all, most businesses are some combination of the two)

> allows market to set the value of a domain

By holding it hostage and waiting for the highest bidder?

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#24

Post by andrewfelix »

cousin_it wrote: post #17
nirvana wrote: post #4

There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative. People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their…

> $7 for a movie? Worth more than $7 in entertainment to the person buying it... or they wouldn't buy it. What if the movie sucked but the person didn't know it beforehand? > You don't get to be a millionaire by making people miserable. Why not? I can think of several ways. You could make them miserable first by advertising, them sell your product as a remedy. Or sell a positional good and let your customers have bid…

I work in Advertising. I make very good money. I am quite sure my work has little benefit to society. Most of what I do is deception.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#25

Post by jimworm »

Making money almost always goes with creating value, but in some cases the optimal strategy to make money does not involve creating value.

If a business that treats money as its primary objective encounters one of these cases, it will defeat its value-creating competition and become a parasite to society.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#26

Post by andrewfelix »

aay4 wrote: post #7
masenghi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. HFT and Domain squatting are legal.

The people who make money doing this will spend the money on goods and services, which in turn benefits the people involved in providing them.

You're referring to "trickle-down economics" which is largely bunk.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#27

Post by tomelders »

It always grates me when people with lot's of money tell people who don't have lot's of money, that it's not about the money.

Money my not equal happiness, but a lack of money certainly equals stress and misery. And while people are being stressed and miserable, they're not at their best.

I think people would find it hard to be so nonchalant about the importance of money and the benefits it can bring if they were worried about how they were going to pay the rent, or if they had a sick kid they couldn't afford to treat properly.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#28

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

nirvana wrote: post #4

There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society. The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative. People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their…

"Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society."

Gambling does not help society, and it is legal:

Buy a house for x, sell it to a fool that will pay 4x, who will sell it to a bigger fool for 6x. Now houses go back to x. The only problem is that the bigger fool is the normal American or European middle class that in not an expert on economics and it has been fooled will all their savings from experts with their own money(investment banks takes the money from banks because they are the same since it become legal).

You can say: "I can choose not to buy a house". But then bailouts happen and you pay for it.

Invest on a company, lets call it "makebook", x money lended from pension funds, "makebook" gives (1/10000)x profits a year, sell private stocks to bigger fools for 10x("internet""cloud","social" or any other magical word companies, are the future...), and let those sell again to bigger fools for 100x. Now the company make an IPO for $100B is never going to recoup, but middle class get crushed again.

http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:GRPN

Also money printing makes a lot of money, it is the main way to "make" money in the world.

I mean I agree with you in what it should be, but a big part of the world does not work that way.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#29

Post by _delirium »

Estragon wrote: post #14
pclark wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia, Teaching, Charities & Not for profit organisations all improve society and you wouldn't do any of those if you wanted to be rich.

Coming from academia myself, I'd have to say you've been deceived on both counts, there. At an institutional level academic research is all about the money, and the prestige used to bring in more grant money and student-loan money. For instance, I know a professor at a top-tier US university who received an award last year purely for being in the select group who had made the school $1M by bringing in large governmen…

I do think this is a big problem (bigger than it was a few decades ago), but I think on average it's still not mostly about the money for most scientists. People don't go into physics because they want to get rich, but mainly because they want to research physics. At least, they shouldn't, because if your main goal is making money, the physics-professor route is far from the optimal one.

I agree that incentives are increasingly selecting for empire-builders, though, which is money-related. There are some people who really want to manage a big, important physics lab, and are more ambivalent about the physics itself, and those people are nowadays being selected for.

Re: Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

#30

Post by andrewfelix »

tomelders wrote: post #27

It always grates me when people with lot's of money tell people who don't have lot's of money, that it's not about the money. Money my not equal happiness, but a lack of money certainly equals stress and misery. And while people are being stressed and miserable, they're not at their best. I think people would find it hard to be so nonchalant about the importance of money and the benefits it can bring if they were wor…

Right on. It's not about being able to drive a Porsche, it's about not having to worry about the rent.
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