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Comment by KGIII | Hacker News Reader

Yup. The highest voted comment is even nearly verbatim.

What I will say is that it has become trivially easy to increase my wealth since selling my company. I've been retired for ten years and make more than I ever did, largely by doing nothing. I don't even manage most of my own finances.

It's kind of rigged. On a whim, I bought $20k worth of Tesla at $24 - because I could afford to risk the money. It was an impulse buy with my only research being reading a bunch of forum posts.

Most people can't risk that, even if they could technically spend that. The list goes on.

It's not 'fair' and very different than what I was used to.

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Why is it not "fair"? You earned that money, its yours to spend or invest how you see fit. If your company would have failed, you would have lost not only money, but also time, and the opportunity cost of doing something else (aka being an employee).

Yeah, that's why I put it in quotes. From an effort point of view, both mental and physical, I don't really do a whole lot but I make significantly more than people who do much more.

From a sort-of-physics view, I get more work out of less energy than most. It's not equal. It's okay, it's just not well balanced from an objective viewpoint. I am not sure if 'fair' is the right word.

you are confusing "work" with "value"

it is possible to do hard "work" and produce zero value. Example: digging a large hole in the middle of the desert.

Conversely it is easy to do little "work" and produce tremendous value Example: writing a script in 15 mins that automates hours of tedious CSV combinations and data grooming (I used this example bc I once did this and saved about 15 weekly hours of a highly paid financial analyst's time)

So now we are clear on work != value in the real world

I'll quickly tackle your investment income -- that was a risk buying 20k worth of Telsa. That easily could have gone to zero as an early stage tech growth stock. When buying a stock you are putting your money on a bet that the company will provide more value to the economy. When your bet pays off it is because the company is doing better and presumably, if following all relevant laws, providing enhanced value to the economy.

There is no law of physics in economics. In fact this thinking is practically dangerous and at the least fosters the wrong attitude towards success. Your success is not someone else's loss. In fact in a market economy, your success will ALWAYS be another's gain since they voluntarily gave you money for a good/service they couldnt do as efficiently as you could.

Economics is NOT a zero sum game. You can quite literally create value from nothing and grow the proverbial pie of value in the world. If you work in programming you realize this quickly.

The downside to a market economy is that work and value will never be a fair ratio. While in some ways unfortunate the more unfortunate alternative is everyone produces equal value from doing equal work. But take a minute to think critically about how that would be possible. I'll give you a hint -- innovation and ingenuity would plummet to zero.

See, it wasn't really a risk for me to spend 20k. Comparatively speaking, that's probably something like a minimum wage employee risking a dime.

That's the inherent unfairness in the system. I can just give 20k to my favorite charity and not even be mildly impacted. Chances are, I won't even save the receipt to give to my accountant for tax purposes. That'd buy someone a nice new car.

It's not fair. I am definitely at an advantage. Now, I earned that advantage. I worked for that advantage. That doesn't make it any more fair.

I'm not happy with the word fair, as it implies morality. I'm also far more able to help those who need it, and I do. So, from a moral viewpoint, I'm very much okay with it. That doesn't really make it fair, however.

What's Joe Sixpack going to do by investing a dime in a single go? Not much. I made enough on just Tesla to buy Joe's house, spending the equivalent of a dime.

It is what it is, but it's a huge advantage. I'm not suggesting it's morally unacceptable, just a reality. I'm not even suggesting we can change the system, just expressing the reality.

> What I will say is that it has become trivially easy to increase my wealth since selling my company. ... largely by doing nothing.

If you have a moment, I wonder if you could expand on that.

I now have most of my money invested. I don't actually do anything, I don't even make many of my investment choices.

Some things I am involved physically in, for example, I bought a bunch of acres with an in-place commercial wild blueberry harvest. I like to be active with that, but I don't really have to. I just enjoy the work.

When I sold, I spent like a drunken sailor, after taxes. However, I've since recouped all of that spending and then some.

It's much easier to make money when you have money to start with. Or so it appears. Most of it, I leave alone and have managed for me.

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