If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened (2006)
timesonline.co.uk
timesonline.co.uk
Felix drags you in with the "how to be rich" message but actually ends up convincing you that you really don't want to be megarich at all and that there are far more important things in life to focus on or give priority to. He says he'd give anything to be young again and that no matter how much money he has, he'll never get time back.
Indeed. And yet I don't see his name in "the 300".
Why aren't these rich people throwing money at SENS research?
Because at this moment science is very far from solving human aging problem, and significant investments wouldn't likely help much.
A lot of very intelligent people think otherwise. Do you have a good justification for such a position?
But "significant investments wouldn't likely help much"? I rather think they would, actually. There is a lot of research to be done, a lot we need to know. This is going to take significant investment; it is hard to think of any comparable research project that hasn't.
This guy, Felix Dennis, is over 60 now. He's worth somewhere north of half a billion. What else does he plan to use the money for? He even says, and I quote:
"Could you turn the clock back for me by forty years, I would willingly swap you every penny and every possession I own in return. And I would have the better of the bargain, too!"
If he believes that, then why not at least throw the dice on aging research? Just 20% of his (largely unnecessary) loot would have an unimaginable effect on the project. Especially if he could shame other rich old coots to match him. And who knows, they might find something quickly enough to give him his extra life. As opposed to doing nothing, that is, and all those zeroes in his bank balance being transferred directly to Her Majesty's Finest the moment he predictably keels over. Why not try and throw a spanner in the works? Mix things up a bit? See what the judicious application of Amount of Funds A to Promising Line of Enquiry B can come up with?
Maybe I lack the perspective of being a grizzly rich old goat but geeze, with their own lives on the table you'd think they would find more productive uses of their money than paintings and bonds. Where altruism fails, naked self-interest should start kicking in. Why isn't it?
If your net worth ran into the hundreds of millions and you'd expressed the heartfelt desire to live longer, as Mr. Felix has, then upon noticing you hadn't taken any action in furtherance of that desire I'd suggest your investment in life extension research, too. But it's just a suggestion, of course.
That said, sometimes compulsion is reasonable. I would not argue with tax money going towards SENS research. A better use than guns and foreign bases, certainly.
Spending tons of money guarantees only one thing -- spending money.
If there were promising results in anti-aging research -- savvy investors would be heavily investing into that field. But they don't, because savvy investors understand that it's not practical at this point, even considering HUGE demand for anti-aging technology.
One might question, for example, the overall value of medical enhancements which lead to gerontocracy, and the subsequent economic and political disadvantage to the generation that comes along afterwards, a problem that the developed world is beginning to experience.
You've been dying since the moment you were born. I was once a child. That child is nowhere in the world. He is dead. In his place is a young man. Some day, very soon, that young man will no longer exist and in his place someone else will live.
Death and rebirth are constant processes. You cannot live without changing. And what is death but change? Three weeks ago I was a man who was ignorant of opengl. That man is now dead forever. In his place, reborn, is a man who has a passing knowledge of it.
The event we normally call death is simply a dramatic version of what occurs every day, every possible moment.
Duality is one of the triumphs of western thought. It has allowed us to escape superstition and is the basis of science and engineering. It keeps the bridges from falling down, but it is not a perfect description of reality and it falls apart if expected to be.
What I'm saying is that so far as it is meaningful to specify things* are "you" and parts of "you", these things do not end or disappear with real, physical, heart-stopping, rotting in ground death. The things which are lost with physical death are in constant flux, so they are constantly being lost anyway.
* No need for a soul or some sort of material ectoplasm. You are in constant subtle contact with everything.
Actually, no. When the Great Flux fluxes and the flux that is you goes away, it is not exactly the same thing as when the flux that is you fluxes and the flux that is some property of you goes away. Let's not interpret Taoism as yet another rationalization of death.
Think about it. It takes time and money to commoditize any new technology; wealthy early adopters are often required to help the technology evolve to the point where it's ready for the masses. Remember when only the "rich" had phones in their cars? And the way ordinary people would often snicker at the very idea of such an indulgence?
Now imagine a time in which only the "rich" can live forever. Suddenly there's not so much snickering, as there is the sound of axes being sharpened.
I think the rule of law will prevail for the most part, and private security will make up the gaps. Whether this is just or injust is left for the reader to ponder but I don't think radical life extension for the rich will prompt revolution.
by sane metrics the person who makes $60k a year is fabulously wealthy.
But what can we do? Is not the solution to raise the tide for all, rather than scuttle our own ships? There is no reason our planet, properly ordered, cannot provide all its inhabitants a comfortable, dignified, even prosperous stay.
Would that I live to see it happen. Everything good comes from the middle classes. Multiply them and you multiply everything - technology, culture, progress. Expanding the middle class should be the goal of any technocrat with an eye to the future. Helping the poor isn't just altruism, it's self-interest too because while they suffer we cannot conspicuously splash money around on more useful things.
i.e. you lease a car, you end up paying 10K in payments. But if you finance it, you end up paying 25K in payments, and get 15K back when you sell it privately. And the number is even less if you trade in, which you might consider since selling a car is a pain in the ass(unless you are sell it way below market value)
But when you lease, you don't have to worry about selling it, you just turn it in. And even if you ever end up going over the limit, pretty much every dealer will forget the overcharges/damages, if you lease another car from them.
And even if you plan to keep the car, leasing is the best option, since essential it's a 3-4 year test drive. You pretty much get to find out EVERYTHING about the car, before you decide to keep it long term. And in the end, you will be able to see what the market is like...in many cases when you lease a popular car that keeps it's value, the buyout is less than the current market value of the car.
My priority is to make my first $1M, then worry about the model year of my car.
As someone who remembers their first high-school vehicle too well, there's value in a level of reliability.
Seriously, it's not always just about spending the least.
Personally I'm a fan of finding a good deal on a used car, buying it, driving it for 1-2 years, and then selling it for the same amount I paid for it. Pretty much the only cost this way is a) insurance(which you can save a few extra bucks by getting only liability) b) gas c) 2-3 oil changes.
And since you are owning the car for a short period, you won't get hit by any costly repairs.
It's another case of doing more work to make more money. The question should be, "Is doing a better investment of time and effort than simply buying a newer car and keeping it longer?"
That job, it does reasonably well.
If you want to drive a new car every three years, then I'm guessing leasing could be better or similar than buying if you finance close to 100%. Whether you should change cars every three years if you can't afford the downpayment is another question.
Lots and lots of people do this for a living; they're called "wholesalers". You can pretty easily get a wholesale dealer license (go to your local DMV if you're in the United States). Once you have this, it will allow you access to dealer-only auto auctions, and the ability to sell more than 3-4 cars a year (I forget what the law is).
Granted, this is a considerable amount of work, with a pretty high risk, but it can be really profitable if you know what you're doing.
Seriously, I think that's likely.
"and there is no way for anyone to become rich."
Well, living longer. Also, you may improve your chances a bit with cryonics. :)
Cryonics advocates are by and large not very interested in trying to justify estimates that give a reasonable chance of success (I'll make an exception for Robin Hansen), and would rather talk about the importance of participation and securing more funding based on the fact that the probability of success is non-zero, and pro-life-esque ethical arguments about the value of human life.
Sounds simply wrong to me, and I know a lot of cryonics advocates. The ones I know try to explain why current vitrification technology ought to preserve neural microstructure. Others work on better vitrification technology. I really don't know where you're getting this from.
From http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/CryoFAQ.html#_VQ_: What is the chance that cryonics will work ?
The chance that cryonics will work depends greatly upon the conditions under which a person is cryopreserved. [...] Probability estimates of future technology cannot be anything other than guesswork, although molecular repair technology does appear to be inevitable. [...] Rather than passively attempting to calculate probability, a person is better advised to realized that preparation to prevent potential problems will greatly affect the probability of success for that person and his/her loved-ones. The chance that cryonics will work also depends greatly upon how much money and effort is put into the technologies and organizational enhancements that can make cryonics work. [...]
From http://www.alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm: What can scientists disagree on about cryonics?
[...] The likelihood that technologies capable of the required analysis, repair, and tissue regeneration will be developed.
The practicality of maintaining cryopreserved people long enough for such technologies to be developed. [...]
The ethics of not cryopreserving people until cryonics is proven to work.
There certainly is plenty of discussion about vitrification, but that is a relatively small part of the equation. Looking at Robin Hansen's post again, he links another breakdown of the total chance of success at http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/WillCryonicsWork.html. These are the only two attempts I know of, and they do a pretty good job of showing how speculative the whole thing is and how much variation that produces in the estimates.
As long as it doesn't influence one's life choices - ie, relying on a successful reanimation to fulfil some goal or what not - I don't see why anyone would not at least give it a shot. Best case scenario, you wake up healthy and hearty in the magnificent future. Worst case scenario, you're dead. But if you don't freeze you're dead anyway, for sure. So why not?
The Harris essay (on the Amcor site) you linked to, by the way, I have many problems with. It purports to take a scientific approach to estimating the probably of success and yet has many inexplicable red herrings that bring down the final total, for example a fanciful excursion into numerous world disaster scenarios which, while entertaining, are pretty tangential to the question at hand. Other "risks" he factors in, like the company going out of business or the storage becoming illegal in that country, are not related to the technology per se and would be handled by the suspendee's descendents or trustees - they are only reasonable if one assumes a complete lack of preparation for the execution of your wishes, and a complete lack of action by your living representatives if you had. They do not belong in the final estimate either. I would take his "optimistic" estimate and multiply it by three, or more.
The cost is somewhere around $250k. That's not insignificant but certainly not out of reach for many, especially in their old age. What else would you do with the money? Even if it's unsuccessful, at least you're capitalising companies doing research for the good of the species. And what's the alternative? Certain oblivion, rotting in the ground, with the money going to general revenue?
When the payoff is infinity it is rational to take any non-zero bet, and the entry price is not even that high. I'll be taking that bet. Don't know why you're so down on it really.
Not sure about that. See this paper by Robin Hanson: http://hanson.gmu.edu/IEEESpectrum-6-08.pdf
According to the book "The Birth of Plenty" by William J. Bernstein, the world's wealth has been growing at a steady rate of 2% since 1820. Not sure where the disagreement comes from. Maybe the author of the article doesn't make a correction for inflation?
But the relative "richer than"/"more powerful than" thing will never disappear - it has been here through all of human history and has to be there pretty much by definition.
The comfortably rich seek to make more money in order to live more comfortably. I see a lot of geeks like this. They like to work their investments more for fun and to build up a nicer retirement fund than to buy a nice car.
The sociably rich seek to gather wealth to change their social status and thereby both attract a different set of peers/partners and increase the number of people below them on the social ladder.
In terms of the former the US is definitely very rich now. The ability of so many people to go to college and enter various job markets or make a living in a small business is amazing.
In terms of the latter only a few can win, because it is a zero-sum game.
Much of what we want depends on other people working for us. I don't think that's going to go away, quite the contrary. Services are an increasingly bigger share of what we want than ever before.
So you're right that relative wealth/poverty will not disappear and that it's here by definition is what I meant by "statistical issue". But that also means that some of us will not be able to do pretty much whatever they want.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest-Entrepreneurs/dp...
+1 for "If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it - it’s cheaper in the long run."
I also think of Felix Dennis every time I hear the Pet Shop Boys - he has a great story about that.
(Though it's very worth getting the real book.)
One of my favorite quotes: "Money is exactly like sex. You think of nothing else if you don't have it, and think of other things if you do."
"When I think about every big leap that happened in my career, it was always because of 'someone I knew.' Always friends of friends. People in some position of power who I kept in touch with, did favors for, and got the same in return."
"You can break someone out of their drab life as an assistant sales rep for a manufacturing company. You might be the coolest thing that ever happened to a teenager going through an unpopular phase. You can give them a mission!
If they’re a fan of your music, invite them over for pizza to spend a night doing a mailing to colleges."
I thought this was an interesting remark, particularly as it would 'only' put him in the "lesser rich" band defined at the end of the article. It makes me wonder why he picked that particular amount, whether it marks a decent balance between effort and reward, or just a decent income off the interest for savings.
It does not take a million dollars to write great poetry.
It takes a pen, a piece of paper, and a poet.
Are you honestly saying that majority of artists (musicians, painters, poets) in history have been independently wealthy?
For example, Michelangelo: http://www.geocities.com/rr17bb/PatrMich.html
Mind you, I know some rich people that are so money obsessed they don't enjoy the fruits of their labors either...I'm thinking of one guy who collects fast cars but can rarely tear himself away from the office in order to drive them.
I used to argue with a close friend about this a lot...
This is the difference between what I called "hippies" and "fascists" (this was a joke, I don't actually mean that the people I'm talking about are fascists or hippies).
Both of these groups of people have the same fantasy. It is almost always something along the lines of "I want to wake up in the morning with absolutely nothing to do. I want to sit on the end of my dock in a cabin far away from anything and catch fish all day without having to worry about anything" or "I want to sail around the world".
The hippie approach to this is almost always some derivative of "You can DO IT! Quit your job, get a cabin or boat or whatever, and just LIVE THAT LIFE!".
This is ignoring what the actual goal is; not having to worry about anything. The fantasy is not having to think about paying rent, or electricity, or gas, or medical bills, or anything at all ever. The fantasy is having enough money that the only things you ever have to consider are things that you WANT to do, like fishing, or writing poetry.
This is why the "fascists" take the approach of "I am going to work my ass off while I'm young, then retire on a boat".
This approach ALSO has a major problem. Often times the "work my ass off" period results in the worker alienating themselves from everything that they love and are working towards spending time with; their friends, family, and loved ones.
My advice? Invest in the lottery.
With his poetry, he again aludes to some of the pitfalls of wealth he mentions in the article.
(That link's broken. This should work - http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/publisher_felix_dennis_ode...)
All this overhead is definitely not for me. I want to get rich but to gain maximum independence and peace of mind, not to clutter my mind with countless possessions.
I don't think I'd live very differently whether I had 10 millions in the bank or 100 millions. I'd just want a ridiculously top-notch workstation (like in Matrix?), really fast connection and a big architecture in the cloud for my world domination fantasies ;P (and maybe a private island or something)
I used to wonder how people like Bill Gates could resist walking away once they'd made their first ten billion, and doing something fun or personally fulfilling. If I were Gates, I'd be living on the Moon and looking through a telescope at Mars. But upon thinking the question through a little farther, I realized that if Gates were the type to do something like that, he'd never have made that first ten billion in the first place. He would've quit after his first ten million, without the resources to do anything but live well on Earth with the usual expensive toys.
A depressing paradox, when you think about it.
As much as I enjoyed reading it, it also made me cringe.
Oh and you got to love the wealth guide at the end of the article.
I guess I can only take one source of advice about it, at a time, heheh. I will say, though, that I think it's great if the subject of economy (in a transitive sense) is still coming up in contemporary discourse
This stuck out as something I've never heard anyone else say, perhaps because it's difficult. I wonder how much truth there is in this statement, and whether it is a necessary truth or a truth of default. Is creativity truly stifled by financial success? It seems more likely that we get good at what we practice and few business people carve the time for creative pursuits.
Does this quote concern other HN readers?
The author does simply assume, however, that becoming rich should be an overriding goal in itself.
He does not consider this goal in relation to others - for example, character, contentment, learning, relationships, etc. (other than to mention in passing the wreckage in such areas that can sometimes accompany the gaining of wealth).
Not that he should. He is not trying to be philosophical. But the approach is inherently limited in omitting any larger discussion.
Good thought-provoking discussion within its limits, though.
"Problem" is that I'm Swedish and thus live in Sweden. Becoming rich here is almost impossible, just as it is impossible to be poor.
So, what are the geographic constraints for becoming rich? I guess it boils down to the US?
I'd even suggest that "geographic constraints" is thinking it wrong, if you re-read Dennis, or look at actual facts. Discarding the formality of money accounts, there were "rich people" in Stalin's USSR and Mao's China. The degree of unpleasantness of the process varies, of course.
Rank Nation Number of billionaires Population People/Billionaire (rounded)
1 Germany 54 82,210,000 1,522,407
2 Russia 32 141,950,000 4,404,687
3 UK 27 60,587,300 2,243,974
4 Turkey 13 71,517,100 5,501,315
5 Italy 12 59,337,888 4,944,824
6 Spain 12 46,157,822 3,846,485
7 France 10 64,473,140 6,447,314
8 Sweden 9 9,234,209 1,026,015
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_p...
Edit: For comparison, I calculated the ratio for the USA (population 306,798,000, billionaires 859, according to the Wikipedia), and found that about one in 357,147 US citizens is a billionaire. So while it's appearantly relatively easy to become a billionaire in Sweden compared to the other European countries, it seems to be even easier in the US. I guess that means you're about half right...
Note2: Since I'm already here for that comment, the number of billionaires is not a very good measure of how easy it is to become rich. "Becoming rich" means moving from middle class to, say, millionaire status. So the metric would be around income changes at that level, not how many super rich people decide to live somewhere or another.
> If you are not prepared to work longer hours than almost anyone you know, despite the jibes of colleagues and friends, you are unlikely to get rich.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/cele...