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The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#81

Post by m463 »

quercusa wrote: post #14

Got trapped in an Amway pitch in my teens and have been inoculated against such things ever since.

You are reminding me about a day decades ago when a guy I met and his wife were sitting in my living room with my gf and I. He wanted to talk science fiction, and his wife and my gf were going to talk about nursing. Seemed like a nice couple until they started talking about "something they were doing" in a mysterious way...

I remember saying, "sounds like scamway or something" and he actually had to say that it was in fact amway he was talking about. uncomfortable.

didn't go much further than that.

Looking backwards I realized how little friction we had getting to know these people, etc... sigh.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#82

Post by tomhow »

butterlettuce wrote: post #34
coredog64 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rent seeking" has a specific definition* and it is not "I use large capital investments to generate regular payments". Buying housing with the intent of renting it is not rent seeking. This is Wikipedia, which is as good as most other definitions: Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth

[flagged]

Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#83

Post by c22 »

paulddraper wrote: post #80
zem wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the ocean , but I have to confess I don't care much for beaches. sand gets everywhere.

A lot of beaches happen to be near oceans.

Fortunately a lot of ocean isn't anywhere near a beach.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#84

Post by davidw »

Yeah, I don't think I could do a pure 'passive income' thing with no 'soul' to it, but there is something to be said for building a business that runs and makes money even when you are asleep or on vacation. This is something that some 'passion businesses' where it's all about the founder and their skills, fail to do.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#85

Post by Loughla »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

This article really felt like a misdiagnosis to me. Sure, a lot of these people were just buying hype from these "get rich from drop shipping!" influencers, just like a million other suckers who got dollar signs in their eyes with real estate schemes, pyramid sale schemes, yada yada, a tale as old as time. I don't think this "passive income" trap is really anything new, and I don't think it was some unique thing that…

We started a trophy and award business because my spouse was already making shirts and stuff so we had most of the equipment. The overhead is really low thanks to quick shipping from a large employee owned national supplier (seriously, JDS industries is fucking awesome).

It's enough to pay for itself easily and pay for a vacation or two a year, for about 4 hours of work a week. If we really put effort in, it could replace our day jobs.

Where most people go wrong is their expectation. We expected this to fund a vacation and maybe car payments. That it's doing that is exactly right and we don't want to take it any further. If people had that view, instead of feeling like they have to make a billion dollars, I think side gigs would be a different beast entirely.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#86

Post by mathgladiator »

dlcarrier wrote: post #67
qurren wrote: post #10

> Free to do what? Sit on a beach, apparently. Quite the opposite for me. I'd like to have freedom to work on things I want to work on without "paying rent", "paying medical bills", or "short term profitability" being a constraint.

I went the lean FIRE route, and now work on whatever open-source projects I feel like, plus local in-person volunteer activities. It's a much better quality of life, even though my job had been enjoyable, the extra scheduling flexibility is really nice.

Me too. It has been great. Im working on projects that are fundable, and now I have joy from it (did go through a lonely pity party phase).

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#87

Post by toyg »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #27
homeonthemtn wrote: post #15

>But zoom out and what you had was just an enormous machine converting human ambition into noise. Ah, the story of a generation

Just one?

Indeed. In the case of music-obsessed boomers, that saying rings true in a very literal way.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#89

Post by just-the-wrk »

Have we all forgotten Tim Ferriss' book 'The 4 Hour Work Week'?

It was enormously influential and was likely involved in every one of these failed entrepreneur's ventures

This discussion reads like 'staying inside from 2019-2022 changed social structures' without saying COVID once

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#90

Post by nitwit005 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

This article really felt like a misdiagnosis to me. Sure, a lot of these people were just buying hype from these "get rich from drop shipping!" influencers, just like a million other suckers who got dollar signs in their eyes with real estate schemes, pyramid sale schemes, yada yada, a tale as old as time. I don't think this "passive income" trap is really anything new, and I don't think it was some unique thing that…

The article's example is a person can't even be bothered to understand what the product he's selling is for, and doesn't appear to fully grasp they're losing money. Even in much better circumstances, success would presumably remain elusive.

Some people just lack the capacity for this sort of thing, and unfortunately fraudsters target them by trying to convince them otherwise.

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