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Buy payphones and retire

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Re: Buy payphones and retire

#341

Post by slumberlust »

TruffleLabs wrote: post #326

Vending machines are not passive! They need repair, management of the money, if they sell goods then they need restocking (and that restock needs to be purchased), and you have to negotiate for location location location. And if coins are involved there is work to collect the coins and get them to the bank. Lastly, running a vending machines company requires regular involvement to make sure everything is running.

Same can be said of any type of 'passive' income. In general, I take passive to imply you get out more than you put in. It's the ratio of time invested to time physically working.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#342

Post by mhuffman »

TruffleLabs wrote: post #326

Vending machines are not passive! They need repair, management of the money, if they sell goods then they need restocking (and that restock needs to be purchased), and you have to negotiate for location location location. And if coins are involved there is work to collect the coins and get them to the bank. Lastly, running a vending machines company requires regular involvement to make sure everything is running.

This is still passive. This is similar to owning 10 apartment buildings. You have to hire managers to deal with all the day-to-day, but there is still money left over. You just have to make sure that they aren't stealing from you. Similar to a lot of investments, which I would also consider passive income. Even with stocks, you can't just sleep or you could end up in a bad way, but you are also not putting in 8 to 12 (or more sometimes) hours of work a day like a small business.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#343

Post by kdmccormick »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #225
kdmccormick wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your parallel to rent seeking. Rent seeking is indeed both (a) arguably immoral and (b) seemingly inescapable in a society which respects property rights. The theory of Georgism [1] suggests a way that we could eliminate rent seeking: by taxing ownership of all common resources at the value of the rent they would demand. That way, property owners, telephone operators, etc. would be rewarded for their lab…

Rent seeking is not immoral. You own something. You choose to let others use it for a fee per month or per day. Some other person voluntarily thinks your deal is good and agrees to pay to use your something. Sure, you can come up with some obscure examples of rent seeking being immoral, like charging a dehydrated dying person $1000 per glass of water, but that's not what we're discussing here. If you disagree, let's…

Bad comparison. I am not seeking rent on any of my stuff.

Now, if I hoarded a bunch of stuff that other people needed and then charged them for access to it, that'd be rent seeking.

> Sure, you can come up with some obscure examples of rent seeking being immoral, like charging a dehydrated dying person $1000 per glass of water, but that's not what we're discussing here.

This is in fact what we're discussing, and your strawman example is ironically very on the nose. Except it's not water, it's housing. People are being forced to move away from my city or sleep on the street because the average unit rent is $3400 a month. The beneficiaries of this system are property owners who spend some money on development and upkeep (which they deserve to profit from) but largely just rake in passive income from having been lucky enough to buy when prices were low.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#344

Post by nuancebydefault »

slumberlust wrote: post #341
TruffleLabs wrote: post #326

Vending machines are not passive! They need repair, management of the money, if they sell goods then they need restocking (and that restock needs to be purchased), and you have to negotiate for location location location. And if coins are involved there is work to collect the coins and get them to the bank. Lastly, running a vending machines company requires regular involvement to make sure everything is running.

Same can be said of any type of 'passive' income. In general, I take passive to imply you get out more than you put in. It's the ratio of time invested to time physically working.

Hmm then everybody who is able to set aside some money, has a passive income. How lucky i am!

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#345

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #72
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #47

When I was a kid, we stole a payphone. Those bastards are tough . We whacked on it for an hour, with a 15-lb sledgehammer. When it finally broke open, it yielded about $1.50.

I once had a storage unit, and lost the key to the padlock. The manager said no problem, and we went to the unit. He pulled out a battery operated angle grinder, and cut through the hasp in a few seconds.

[deleted]

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#346

Post by dctoedt »

warner25 wrote: post #88
WalterBright wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a storage unit, and lost the key to the padlock. The manager said no problem, and we went to the unit. He pulled out a battery operated angle grinder, and cut through the hasp in a few seconds.

This reminds me of storing equipment and supplies at the platoon level in the Army. The Army owns a huge number of shipping containers, like they're pervasive on any Army base, just part of the landscape. Basically every platoon keeps most of its stuff in these containers instead of proper buildings (minus weapons and ammunition, unless deployed somewhere, and then the shipping containers become arms rooms too). It a…

Back in the day, on Navy ships it was a punishable offense for anyone to have bolt cutters except for the master-at-arms people (the ship's internal police force), because everyone used padlocks on their personal lockers and also on a lot of gear lockers.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#347

Post by avree »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #344
slumberlust wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same can be said of any type of 'passive' income. In general, I take passive to imply you get out more than you put in. It's the ratio of time invested to time physically working.

Hmm then everybody who is able to set aside some money, has a passive income. How lucky i am!

Yes, that is why it's called "passive investing", because it creates a "passive income".

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#348

Post by emmelaich »

whatusername wrote: post #269

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...

They also provide wifi -- https://fon.com/ marketed as Telstra Air.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#349

Post by eru »

hunter2_ wrote: post #327
eru wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking inflation adjusted or nominal? Total returns?

I guess nominal, because not having kept up with inflation would be the main source of it sucking badly. I think of it like this: You lose to inflation badly with uninvested cash. You get close to keeping up with inflation with near zero risk vehicles (CD or high yield savings account). You hope to at least keep up with inflation with medium-low risk vehicles (S&P500 or similar funds). You roll the decide after that…

> You lose to inflation badly with uninvested cash.

Details depend on what currency you pick (and what decade you are in).

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#350

Post by eru »

jon_richards wrote: post #331
eru wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, holding cash also has risks.

That's not really my point. I think one thing that gets lost in the "everything has different levels of risk" discussion is that many risk/reward profiles are bad . Calling everything a tradeoff is misleading. Banks are more than happy to capitalize on laziness and lack of knowledge (an American is more likely to change their spouse than their bank), so the balance between risk and reward gets thrown out of whack. Th…

> I think one thing that gets lost in the "everything has different levels of risk" discussion is that many risk/reward profiles are bad.

Yes, not everything is on the efficiency frontier for risk/reward. Eg cash is convenient to spend, so it can 'get away with' offering a worse risk/reward profile.

Yes, the Sharpe ratio is one of many ways to measure risk adjusted returns.

> If you want to get really deep into investment theory, Beta implies basically everything is a good investment in small enough amounts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(finance)

Well, that assumes no fees, transaction costs and taxes, I think. And even without transaction costs etc, the theoretically optimal amount can be so low that it's not worth bothering with.

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