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Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

nautil.us

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Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#281

Post by Swizec »

ionwake wrote: post #229
Swizec wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add a third category: fortune . Lot is what you were born with. Luck is when random things do or don't happen regardless of skill. You can manage it to an extent. Bad luck through being careful and various types of insurance, good luck mostly through participating. Buying bitcoin 3 years ago and selling at great profit now is pure luck. Maybe you influenced the market to grow, probably it was pure luck. Fortu…

I agree with your quote but I have to say... The growing a fortune with bitcoin should be classed as fortune.

If you contributed to the growth of bitcoin, yes. Fortune.

If you were just along for the ride, no. Luck.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#282

Post by Swizec »

q-base wrote: post #223
Swizec wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add a third category: fortune . Lot is what you were born with. Luck is when random things do or don't happen regardless of skill. You can manage it to an extent. Bad luck through being careful and various types of insurance, good luck mostly through participating. Buying bitcoin 3 years ago and selling at great profit now is pure luck. Maybe you influenced the market to grow, probably it was pure luck. Fortu…

"Saying I was lucky negates the hard work I put in and spits on that guy who’s freezing his ass off back in Brooklyn." - of course you can't tell people how they should take your comments. But saying that you/he/she was lucky does not negate the fact that they may have worked hard. Saying it was ONLY luck does. Working hard of course put you in a position where you could gain from the luck. You won't suddenly end up…

That's my whole point. When you position yourself to take advantage of opportunities and it works out, that's fortune. Like building a lottery ticket that wins.

Luck is when it just happens without any hard work. Like buying a lottery ticket that wins.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#283

Post by majani »

sanderjd wrote: post #274
charlesdm wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more probability than luck. Anyone with moderate intelligence and who is willing to make a commitment to building wealth can say, make 5 or 10 million in life. It might not be easy nor quick, but from what I've seen, it's definitely achievable (i'm not there yet). You do however need to build up a specific skillset. At least 90% of the population is either 1) not interested in acquiring wealth, or 2) not willing…

> Anyone with moderate intelligence and who is willing to make a commitment to building wealth can say, make 5 or 10 million in life. This definitely isn't true for "anyone born in the world", and doesn't ring true to me for "anyone born in the US" either. Maybe it's true for "anyone born into the middle class in the US". (But that middle class is rapidly shrinking.) Unfortunately, starting conditions still matter a…

Man, some people here just cannot picture life outside their bubble. It's amazing to me that someone flippantly dismisses making 5 million dollars as an average thing. I'm from a country where only 68,000 people out of 45 million make at least $1,000 per month[1]. That's 0.15% of the population. Where you were born is probably the biggest single factor in success

[1] http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Number-of-Kenyans-earning...

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#284

Post by charlesdm »

majani wrote: post #283
sanderjd wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone with moderate intelligence and who is willing to make a commitment to building wealth can say, make 5 or 10 million in life. This definitely isn't true for "anyone born in the world", and doesn't ring true to me for "anyone born in the US" either. Maybe it's true for "anyone born into the middle class in the US". (But that middle class is rapidly shrinking.) Unfortunately, starting conditions still matter a…

Man, some people here just cannot picture life outside their bubble. It's amazing to me that someone flippantly dismisses making 5 million dollars as an average thing. I'm from a country where only 68,000 people out of 45 million make at least $1,000 per month[1]. That's 0.15% of the population. Where you were born is probably the biggest single factor in success [1] http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Number-of-Kenya…

Did I say it's an average thing? I said, if you want to dedicate 20 years of your life to it, not focusing on other things, living in a Western country, you can do it. Nowhere did I say it's a common thing.

Second, there are plenty of people who manage to make $10,000+ a month online, regardless of where they live. Probably millions.

Also, even in impoverished countries there must be opportunities to make money and do deals. If you keep looking at what others are making, then you will never make any money. Different setting, different opportunities. The average person, regardless of the country he or she lives in, will never be wealthy. €100 in Europe might get you less than $10 in South Africa. Location matters as well in terms of purchasing power.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#285

Post by mindcrime »

bradyo wrote: post #203
mindcrime wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the system" doesn't have to distribute rewards equally for people to work to improve the situation of all (or most) people. So I (and others in this thread) will continue to try to convince people to have more empathy until we do have such a system. I see those as orthogonal concerns. You can have empathy even if you don't have a "everything is luck" mentality.

Sure, the system doesn't _have_ to be that way for people to work together. But sooner or later they'll come to the same conclusion you have - what's the point if they're not seeing equal returns? Who knows what will happen at that point - I'd rather fix the system before we get to that point. And sure, you can have some empathy even if you don't have all of the empathy. But those are definitely not orthogonal concer…

Being able to empathize fully with someone's situation IMO includes recognizing that everything truly is luck. Like down to your genetic makeup. Hell, being alive is lucky.

That seems like a content-free and useless definition of "luck" to me. What value do we gain from pointing out that "being alive is lucky"? We're deep into "shit nobody can do anything about" territory here.

Again, I don't dispute that different people start from different positions in life, but my position is that we should focus on doing things to broadly expose opportunities for everyone, and then providing support for the the truly unfortunate who are not able to take advantage of any opportunity. But I have NO problem with unequal returns in terms of relative achievement between people who start in similar positions. Some people simply do work harder, and create more value. I don't see any reason they shouldn't benefit from that.

what's the point if they're not seeing equal returns?

I don't see why anybody should expect equal returns, especially not in terms of lockstep "moment in time for moment in time" comparison. Success won't come at the same time for everybody. We should also keep in mind that "success" is not a binary operator... it's more of a continuum - not to mention somewhat personal and subjective anyway.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#286

Post by sn9 »

awa wrote: post #144
criddell wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cory Doctorow pointed to an interest article that described the subsidies that flow to wealthy households: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/03/low-income-us-households-ge... I wonder if your father thinks of his mortgage interest deduction as an example of receiving help he doesn't deserve?

I am not sure why mortgage interest deduction gets such a bad rap. It allows a lot of people to be able to afford homes which they couldn't otherwise. It helps the housing market/industry and banking industry. Apart from that a lot of other countries has it. If I had to change something I would actually add a rental deduction to help those who can't afford to buy housing instead of removing mortgage interest deductio…

This NPR podcast explains it as well as other economic policies that receive support from the majority of economists across the political spectrum: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/18/156928675/episo...

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#287

Post by wycx »

dv_dt wrote: post #194
SilasX wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am not sure why mortgage interest deduction gets such a bad rap. It allows a lot of people to be able to afford homes which they couldn't otherwise. It helps the housing market/industry and banking industry. No, it doesn't. The prospect of getting the deduction drives up demand for home purchases and therefore the price (relative to income). If we got rid of it, the same mortgage would take more money out of your…

I wouldn't be so sure that removing mortgage interest deduction would do anything to help pricing in home markets. People owning rental properties get to deduct interest on financing used for the property. If we eliminated the mortgage interest deduction for home owners, we would be strongly favouring rent seeking behaviour - literally.

That's why you also have to tax away all capital gains associated with land (not structures) value appreciation beyond the real inflation rate. Land (outside of reclamation edge case) is not created by humans, and when land becomes private property it is necessarily depriving the public of the use of that land, thus the land owner owes the public for the right to deprive them of the land in the form of land tax, and since the land owner did not create the land, they are not entitled to any appreciation in the value of the land, that belongs to the public. The land owner is entitled to the returns of their productive investment, i.e. building structures etc. Land price then is largely set by what sort of productive return it can generate, not by the supply of credit and lending standards and supply of greater fools.

If capital gains were taxed away, that would counteract the situation where mortgage tax breaks feed directly into increased prices.

What I suggest above will be very very unattractive to many people, as real estate speculation represents one of the best 'money for nothing' speculations most people can engage in, but speculation is by definition unproductive, and it would seem to be a good idea, if unpopular to engineer a system that discourages real estate bubbles.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#288

Post by sanderjd »

charlesdm wrote: post #284
majani wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, some people here just cannot picture life outside their bubble. It's amazing to me that someone flippantly dismisses making 5 million dollars as an average thing. I'm from a country where only 68,000 people out of 45 million make at least $1,000 per month[1]. That's 0.15% of the population. Where you were born is probably the biggest single factor in success [1] http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Number-of-Kenya…

Did I say it's an average thing? I said, if you want to dedicate 20 years of your life to it, not focusing on other things, living in a Western country, you can do it. Nowhere did I say it's a common thing. Second, there are plenty of people who manage to make $10,000+ a month online, regardless of where they live. Probably millions. Also, even in impoverished countries there must be opportunities to make money and d…

> I said, if you want to dedicate 20 years of your life to it, not focusing on other things, living in a Western country, you can do it.

I'm really sorry to quibble, but you didn't say any of those things in the comment I replied to. I mean, there just literally isn't anything about "20 years" or "Western country" in there.

> Second, there are plenty of people who manage to make $10,000+ a month online, regardless of where they live. Probably millions.

Citation needed!

> Also, even in impoverished countries there must be opportunities to make money and do deals.

Why "must" there be? This just sounds like wishful thinking. There is no natural law stating that opportunity is shared globally, and in fact this is mostly not the case in practice.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#289

Post by sanderjd »

crusso wrote: post #279
sanderjd wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also tends to over-reward those who create value by having a strong negotiating position (usually due to coming to the table with lots of capital) and under-reward those who create value through labor. This is better than crony-ism, but it's not at all a panacea.

Over-reward? By what measure? If capital amplifies negotiating power then it means that capital is more important. One who can acquire capital to use in negotiation is using the most leverage to create value. Labor's value is exactly what someone is willing to pay for it.

By the measures of hard work and value creation being discussed in this thread. I'm sure you disagree. I'll try to save some time by stipulating that this is a value judgment, I likely disagree with your disagreement, and I am happy to agree to disagree.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#290

Post by vitaminbandit »

charlesdm wrote: post #284
majani wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, some people here just cannot picture life outside their bubble. It's amazing to me that someone flippantly dismisses making 5 million dollars as an average thing. I'm from a country where only 68,000 people out of 45 million make at least $1,000 per month[1]. That's 0.15% of the population. Where you were born is probably the biggest single factor in success [1] http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Number-of-Kenya…

Did I say it's an average thing? I said, if you want to dedicate 20 years of your life to it, not focusing on other things, living in a Western country, you can do it. Nowhere did I say it's a common thing. Second, there are plenty of people who manage to make $10,000+ a month online, regardless of where they live. Probably millions. Also, even in impoverished countries there must be opportunities to make money and d…

ctrl + F: "20 years", "Western country", "not focusing on other things"
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