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Buy payphones and retire

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Re: Buy payphones and retire

#61

Post by wsatb »

cies wrote: post #53
btilly wrote: post #42

Ah. Passive income. It can indeed work out for you, but it is the fact that it can work out that makes it so tempting for scammers. Warren Buffett claims that the best business that he was ever in was installing pinball machines in barber shops, then splitting the revenue with the barbers. See https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/warren-buffett-bought-a-25-p... for verification.

Buffett lies. He had much better investments. I likes to tell us all stories. The big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish than he wants us all to believe.

Best doesn’t need to mean best investment. Best could simply mean what he enjoyed most. He likely thinks fondly of a simpler time.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#64

Post by Der_Einzige »

cies wrote: post #53
btilly wrote: post #42

Ah. Passive income. It can indeed work out for you, but it is the fact that it can work out that makes it so tempting for scammers. Warren Buffett claims that the best business that he was ever in was installing pinball machines in barber shops, then splitting the revenue with the barbers. See https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/warren-buffett-bought-a-25-p... for verification.

Buffett lies. He had much better investments. I likes to tell us all stories. The big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish than he wants us all to believe.

For just a tiny example of the "big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish", see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network

Expert networks are an example of a side-gig which would compete with traditional "passive income" stuff for talanted tech folks.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#65

Post by notatoad »

andrewla wrote: post #57

The concept of "passive income" is almost a scissor concept. Or maybe only if you couple it with the categorical imperitive. On the one hand, it's so obviously true that it would be great to have passive income. Draw the salary you're drawing now, with some growth, and not have to work. On the other hand, if everyone had access to this capability then society and civilization would grind to a halt. People make things…

"passive income", in it's original iteration, wasn't the idea that you could make money by doing nothing. The idea was that you made something or did something that you were uniquely able to make or do, and then the result of your labour would make money for you while you put in minimal continued effort.

the version of passive income where you don't do anything productive at all, ever, and just put up some initial capital in exchange for even more money back, is always a scam. some people might come out ahead sometimes, but more people will lose than win.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#66

Post by pc86 »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #9
Swizec wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would I want to retire? /../ I like working, it is my hobby and life. So you can work on things because you want to not because you have to. At least that's my plan. Not quite there yet.

Note that there are loads of things that you can't keep working on after you retire. If your company had you in a position where you ran really interesting projects, all of those are the company's projects, not yours. You got to work on them because you worked there, and once you retire you can't just keep working on them, you can't even do the same work on your own because your contract made that pretty clear: now y…

It's pretty cool that you have such detailed knowledge into everyone's personal circumstances that you know they all have employment contracts and what the details of those contracts are.

Most people reading this right now are in the US, and the vast majority of US employees at at-will, which means no contract at all. Even for those with contracts, it's a pretty big leap to get to "IP theft" with anything anyone could reasonably work on in retirement.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#67

Post by btilly »

cies wrote: post #53
btilly wrote: post #42

Ah. Passive income. It can indeed work out for you, but it is the fact that it can work out that makes it so tempting for scammers. Warren Buffett claims that the best business that he was ever in was installing pinball machines in barber shops, then splitting the revenue with the barbers. See https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/warren-buffett-bought-a-25-p... for verification.

Buffett lies. He had much better investments. I likes to tell us all stories. The big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish than he wants us all to believe.

What investments do you think were better?

He's had far more income from other investments. But he turned $25 into $2000 in 3 years. That's around 331% profit per year, compounding annually. Given that he likes to invest in relatively mature companies, I can easily believe that no other investment ever showed a greater annualized return.

(Of course this calculation discounts his personal investment of time to run the business.)

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#68

Post by WalterBright »

SoftTalker wrote: post #52
cryptozeus wrote: post #44

Slight off topic self rant: I tried this (dropshipping etc), went against all the good wisdom and rules of creating honest and passionate business. Failed miserably. Funny how brain works, I knew in 3 months that this is not honest, it feels spammy but then orders were coming in so I convinced myself that half the amazon products are doing the same thing. There is market for it then why should I not do this. This nag…

The lesson here is that there really is no free lunch. There is no secret, no-work way to make lots of money. If anyone can do it, there's little value in it so you won't make much money. If you have thousands of dollars to invest and want to do no work, just buy index funds.

There are ways to make lots of money with no work and little investment. An example is buying lottery tickets.

The problem, though, is the risk goes up with the potential reward. Your chances of winning the lottery are indistinguishable from zero. But it's still there.

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#69

Post by jgalt212 »

cies wrote: post #53
btilly wrote: post #42

Ah. Passive income. It can indeed work out for you, but it is the fact that it can work out that makes it so tempting for scammers. Warren Buffett claims that the best business that he was ever in was installing pinball machines in barber shops, then splitting the revenue with the barbers. See https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/warren-buffett-bought-a-25-p... for verification.

Buffett lies. He had much better investments. I likes to tell us all stories. The big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish than he wants us all to believe.

He makes all his money from leverage. But instead of borrowing from banks or the capital markets whose willingness to roll over debts can be fickle, he borrows via the premia his insurance companies collect.

Away from this passive income has a terrible tax profile--unless you employ leverage (see above).

Re: Buy payphones and retire

#70

Post by mmsc »

hyperhopper wrote: post #38
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also heard that vending machine locations are highly contested. You can buy the machine, but you are not going to have the pull to deploy it at the airport. Those contracts were signed long ago.

Then why are there so few? And containing such a small variety of goods? In Japan anywhere from a busy subway to a remote park, there will be rows of vending machines everywhere, with more varieties of sodas, coffees, soups, ice creams, candies, hell even clothes or meat! And those are just the common types. You're never far from what you want in an automated fashion. Why are we so behind in America when there seemin…

Because in the USA, they're seen as target practise. Good luck leaving an (expensive) pinball machine in a Manhattan subway for 72-hours.
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