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Comment by psb5 | Hacker News Reader

All that is a side show. What would you have done with the cash if you were right? Thats always the real story.

My Aunt runs an accounting firm and is constantly moaning about the number of people who have over accumulated cash from IPOs and have no clue what to do with it all.

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I would retire.

If you have two million euros lying around, that would be life-changing money for me. I'd put everything into VWCE and then live off interest. I think I'd spend a year in Japan just to see what it's like, then travel around a few other countries, and finally settle somewhere back in Europe - buy a small house in the middle of nowhere, renovate it, and then smoke weed and play video games until the end of my days.

That's such a cynical take. If everyone does what you're describing, we will never make progress as a society.

You're not less cynical here

Sure. If everyone became software engineers then we'd have 8 billion IT staff and zero food production, which would lead to the extinction of human race by mass hunger.

I'm not sure what's exactly your point besides "if everyone does exactly the same thing, then society collapses".

I believe Apple had a TV series lately which proffered a solution to this.

Nah, it's just a small-scale form of wealth redistribution. The poster takes themselves out of the job market (making way for someone else), and then goes and spends their IPO money at a favourable exchange rate overseas. Literally everyone wins (versus the poster hoarding money and holding a lucrative job).

I can think of lots of people that would make society better if they would do that instead of what they are doing now.

It’s not cynical, but it is overly consumerist.

I cannot imagine having untold amounts of money only to do nothing afterwards except consume the stuff put in front of you.

€2M isn't "unfold amounts of money"

It's enough for a modest retirement.

No shit. Do you really think this is an original comment to make?

Progress towards what? Do you think "progress" as conceived by sillicon valley billionaires aligns with the type of life you would like?

There's a non-trivial chance "working hard" as defined by the modern ethos is doing more damage than good.

> and then smoke weed and play video games until the end of my days.

This might be less fun than you imagine.

Don't you think sitting alone at home smoking weed and playing games might get a little bit lonely? Humans need human contact. Might as well pick up a night shift at the convenience store so you can talk to people.

At which point the plan becomes something you can put into action tomorrow, if you wanted. It's like the parable of the Mexican fisherman: https://www.thekinnardhomestead.com/the-parable-of-the-mexic...

Stoner WoW addicts working dead-end jobs live better than kings did in previous centuries, and we're too status-obsessed to notice this.

That's something I have at the back of my mind. My company is completely dysfunctional so 90% of my job is literally doing nothing, which is amazing. The problem is the fear of losing this position.

You could spend some of that 90% time building skills for hobbies / a hypothetical future job search.

But why?

If I manage not to get fired for 12 years then I'll reach the endgame.

Is your company hiring?

Why can't you just play games with other people? Do you really need _work_ to not feel lonely?

Gaming communities can be very toxic

Just like corporate jobs. The issue I have with the advice is I don't see why _working_ is supposed to be solution, rather than trying to find community somewhere else.

Most communities suck. This is why I want to live far away from everyone and sit at home and smoke weed rather than deal with people.

> I'd spend a year in Japan just to see what it's like

There's laws and shit about that. You can't just immigrate to a country illegally.

with enough money, anything is possible

2m isn't going to make Japan allow more than 6 months of stay in a year on a tourist visa. It might be enough to hide yourself from deportation, though who knows what happens when you try to leave. It might be enough to convince a local to get into a sham marriage for spouse visa sponsorship.

You can however signup for a long-stay tourist visa, which lets you spend a year in Japan

We love in a kind of bizarro world where the “capitalists” have printed so much money that they’re wildly inefficient in allocation of resources, as evident by all the excess cash sloshing around; while the “communists” of China and to some degree Russia and the BRICS in general are widely efficient in allocation of resources, as evident by the creativity and innovation and advancements they’ve made in very short order.

That’s at least my generalized perspective.

Including Russia and BRICS doesn’t support your thesis. Nothing efficient about their resource allocation

(And China is a state capitalist economy)

Russia is incredibly isolationist which makes it categorically different to the other BRICS

Russia has allocated a significant proportion of its resources to exterminating its own children.

China has done well, but the rest of the BRICS categorization makes no sense to me. India (and also Pakistan) are behind China on renewables but are having a huge surge right now.

I can't see much creativity and innovation in Russia. They sell oil and natural resources & use the money (whatever is not stolen by oligarchs) to fund an unnecessary war which they are losing.

If anything, Russia is a prime example of inefficient allocation of resources.

Well, China's efficiency seems to come mostly from the government enforcing competition between companies by several mechanisms, and creating some "free entrepreneurship" areas where they allow people to start companies with almost no strings attached.

And I don't see what you are seeing on the rest of BRICS.

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