Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonzzzies | Hacker News Reader

Why would I want to retire? I am old and most my friends are boring or died after they retired. Sounds like hell on earth. I like working, it is my hobby and life.

View on HN

This article isn't about retirement; the reference to retirement is the line the scammer is using to hook people. The scammer is telling the mark they will generate lots of money from passive income (from payphone calls), and won't need to work. It is actually an article about Ponzi schemes.

Ponzi schemes are pure financial instruments. If a product is involved it’s called an MLM.

I'd say that is a bit like splitting hairs, but the article does question the extent to which actual payphones and calls were actually involved..

Ponzi schemes are illegal. MLMs are legalized Ponzi schemes. The outcomes are similar but one has a veneer of legitimacy that makes it more dangerous for some people.

It's instructive not to argue the finer points without acknowledging what TFA says about the operators of the scheme breaking the law:

> In 2006, Charles Edwards was convicted of 83 counts of wire fraud and sentenced to thirteen years in prison.

Then another company:

> By 2009, more than a dozen people had been convicted of fraud in relation to Prometheus.

MLMs are pyramid schemes, not ponzis. For example bitcoin is a (somewhat decentralized, but centralized among major mining companies) pyramid scheme while Tether is a Ponzi.

Both pyramid schemes and Ponzis are illegal. MLMs are illegal in many places. In the US they were successfully able to lobby their way into carving out a legal niche in the 80s. They are also the reason supplement safety is so loosely regulated in the US.

> 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 you're committing IP theft.

So you retire, and by law you're no longer allowed to do the thing you love. It's not a good deal.

You can be "retired" (don't _need_ to work) and still have a dayjob. My father-in-law does this and works 2 days a week so he doesn't get bored and has a little more spending money, all because he likes his profession but not because he has to work for a living anymore

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.

What made you read that comment and go "they're talking about everyone" instead of "oh, yeah, those people also exist, blanket statements don't make sense in this context"?

The things I love are broader than "IP controlled by my company." I can see that if the thing you love is massive financial institutions or defense contracting or something?

Maybe he's a helicopter mechanic or a million other things you can't just do at home.

Most of the things I love aren't done at home. I already noted there are passions that can't be performed individually.

Go buy 40 acres in the desert and live your dream.

If a very expensive hobby is a lot of work are you working or retired?

Unless it comes with a fleet of helicopters to play with, I don't see how that's helpful.

Or, you know, you're a specialist who worked their way into a career at anything that produces hardware. Philips, Samsung, heaven forbid you work for a larger corporation, how many of those people can there possibly be, right?

You have won. Yes, if the thing you love specifically requires the collection of capital then of course, you will have difficulty finding that outside a corporation.

I suspect with analysis this is not the case for the majority of folks.

Hardware is a funny example though, because I feel it's easier than ever to get some interesting hardware stuff going.

Makers, programmers, hackers always have to work by definition, the question is whether you also want to. That can be done anywhere, it's all a state of mind. Most of the answers to the problems of the world are inside of there.

I think the deal is when you retire you no longer have to work. You can spend your time doing whatever you want. If you don’t feel like working today, you don’t have to. If something comes up last minute, you can change your mind. If you want to move to something new and more interesting, you can.

Well, if that is the definition, then i'm retired for almost 25 years now (I sold my first company at 25). But yeah, I saw retiring more as the people I know who retired in the traditional sense; 'now finally we can travel!' and that turns out to be a rather boring and unfulfilling lifestyle. the old (70+) people that are happy and not dead, all work fulltime in their own companies. From my barkeeper (he is 75) to the owner of a 100m euro/year company that makes roofs who is 90 and goes to the factory every day.

You might not want to retire, but your body (or mind) might have other ideas.

Do you already have financial independence? Not being able to understand why retiring would be desirable sounds like an incredibly privileged opinion.

Don't humblebrag.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com