
Why People Don't Get Wealthy - Ozzie_osman
https://calacanis.com/2019/03/04/why-people-dont-get-wealthy/
======
lacey
How about:

\- investing time in things that ultimately do not pay off

\- _taking risks_

\- lots of small poor choices that add up

\- bad luck (yes, to some extent you can make your own luck but sometimes
things are outside of your control)

Honestly I find his list pretty poorly thought through, especially in
comparison to the recent blog post by Sam Altman:
[http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-
successful](http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful)

~~~
dwd
Luck is making the better decision in a timely manner based on incomplete
knowledge where each option appears equally valid.

However, people generally are poor at calculating probability combined with
risk/reward and simply make bad decisions.

And sometimes, all choices lead to bad outcomes.

~~~
Blackstone4
>Luck is making the better decision in a timely manner based on incomplete
knowledge

What?! So going through a green light and getting hit by someone going through
a red is a bad decision?

Getting cancer is a bad decision or bad luck?!

~~~
dwd
Seems his list was missing an important one: Not playing the victim.

Yes, sometimes other people will cause you harm. Could you have avoided it,
probably not as you can't always predict the future.

How you move on from a bad situation is your decision. Wallowing in self-pity
because the world has done you wrong is a good way to never succeed.

As an aside: your chances of getting a particular cancer can be affected by
your lifestyle choices so you can make better decisions to avoid it.

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
This might be one of the biggest issues in America today. We have a seemingly
large number of folks, or perhaps a small number of highly vocal ones on
social media, that believe the system is so rigged against them and that they
have no chance of improving their lot in life.

At the same time as this pessimism has permeated America, a global, friction-
free marketplace for services and products has emerged that anyone can tap
into: the internet and mobile phones.

This network is not only available to all, it also hosts the keys to the
kingdom, with every single skill and clever strategy for building these
products and services unlocked, for free, for everyone, on YouTube, Coursera,
etc.

That's the disconnect I'm concerned about... so many people in America are
giving up on the American dream, while other countries are copying it (i.e.
China).

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temp1928384
Man I can't wait for this wave of "VC as pseudo social media philosopher" to
end.

~~~
arisAlexis
who can philosophize better about wealth than the people that became
successful and wealthy? The other kind of social media philosophers is the
Socialist type that were never successful but blame the system and everything
else

~~~
djmips
Being successful does not make you uniquely qualified to assess how to be
successful. In my experience most people will rationalize success stemming
from their own superiority and minimize the role of luck and standing.

~~~
alexgmcm
Or it could just be like Skinner's superstitious pigeons - it was mostly
chance and now they attribute it to some series of events that really have
nothing to do with it.

~~~
stumbellina
What? He had superstitious pigeons?? I know his daughter killed her self so
apparently the skinner box wasn’t as seamless as planned..

~~~
alexgmcm
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Superstition_in_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Superstition_in_the_pigeon)

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programminggeek
It is worth listening to the Dave Ramsey podcast just to understand how people
spend their money foolishly. Yes, there is bad luck and lack of opportunity,
and there is also boatloads of foolish spending and borrowing too.

There are plenty of people who could build wealth on the average salary in the
US if they were on a budget, were reasonably frugal, and in general lived like
our grandparents did say 1950-1970 or so.

~~~
arisAlexis
while I was putting aside at work 25% of a very good salary most of my peers
with higher salaries spent it all on luxury until huge layoffs came. No luck
involved there

~~~
simonh
A colleague remortgaged his house when prices went up and spent 30k on a new
car and big holiday. A few years later the housing market crashed and he had
to sell his house because he got a new job in another city, saddling him with
crippling debt. Ouch.

I have relatives on one side of my family who are all on relatively low
incomes, but they make terrible financial decisions. When my uncle retired he
sold his house, moved into a bungalow and gave the difference in price to his
sons. They all had mortgages and children, but instead of saving it they all
spent big on new cars and big holidays. It seems to be a bit of a pattern. My
wife and I are considerably better off, but in many ways we live far more
careful and frugal lives.

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marssaxman
Most people who chase wealth will not succeed. Desiring and pursuing wealth
therefore seems like a path to disappointment. Doesn't it make more sense to
reframe one's perspective on life and accept that outcomes are almost entirely
out of your control?

~~~
simonh
Just because not all succeed, that does not mean that success is random.

Taking entrepreneurial risk is a choice, and some people do succeed and build
huge businesses employing thousands of people that way. Also those that
succeed tend to be very smart and hard working, so the choices they made
clearly contributed to their success, otherwise being smart and choosing to
work hard would not have made a difference.

Conversely I have generally taken the safe road in my career, while still
being willing to move on when the time was right. This strategy has served me
well. I've seen others takes risks I would not have, for some it worked out
well but for others it was disastrous. For example a friend had catastrophic
health problems, but he was working as a contractor so it was financially
disastrous too. If the same had happened to me, I was on a very generous
benefits package and I and my family would have been well looked after.

Individual choices really do matter. Sure you can still be hit by a bus, but
most of the things that happen in our lives are tractable to mitigation
strategies. Conversely luck certainly can be a factor in success, but even
when it is you still need the sense to recognise it and take advantage of it,
and that can often involve taking calculated risks.

------
rongenre
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)

------
bsh
Something missing is that there's a difference between how owners and
employees are rewarded.

An owner's income doesn't necessarily scale with effort. Instead, it scales
with impact (not necessarily theirs, either). An owner can make a decision or
do some work and get exponential rewards. Or someone they employ can make a
decision or do some work, and the owner can get exponential rewards. An owner
can also completely stop working, and by virtue of being an owner still reap
the rewards.

Employees on the other hand don't have this leverage. Your income basically
scales with effort. Working hard or having a huge impact can get you a
promotion and increase your income, but only a little. You won't get a million
dollar bonus by earning the company a million dollars. Importantly, if you
stop working, you stop earning (this is a big roadblock for many people who do
want to try starting their own business, people who want to be an owner).

Besides aptitude and opportunity, the economy wouldn't function if everyone
started their own company. Many things truly do need teams working together to
get things done. Perhaps we should be talking about how to reward workers in a
way that scales with their collective impact rather than their effort.

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thundergolfer
This is just oblivious pontificating on politics and economy. He's obviously
been immensely successful in tech, but here he's not connecting at all with
the issues of young people, or with left scholarship.

> Conversely, if we pursue free services and money we will drive more power
> into the hands of a larger and larger incompetent government, and I think we
> know where that will end up — and it won’t be great for anyone.

Sure you can just state this, but no one has to buy it. My government has more
than adequate at providing "free" healthcare to everyone, and it's pretty
stupid to broadly dismiss that like it "won't be great for anyone". It's
actually great for everyone. "Incompetent government" is a pernicious anti-
social idea. Modern governments have a myriad problems but Government itself
has proven its competence over and over again at addressing very difficult
societal problems.

> Entrepreneurship has created the greatest gains in our standard of living to
> date, even if it’s hard to grasp the wild polarization of wealth in society.

You can sub in one of [Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, Western Civilisation] in
this statement, and find it repeated over and over again like it's self-
evident. Many "greatest gains" in our society had blatantly nothing to do with
Entrepreneurship, take for example the Civil Rights movement, which certainly
contributed greatly to overall standard of living. The Capitalist model can't
slap a dollar figure on that though, so let's just ignore it.

Overall this piece is so confidently slap-dash I don't think Calacanis is
actually listening to or reading any of the best opponents to his world view.

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smadge
A more parsimonious explanation is that people’s incomes are less than or
equal to their expenses (rent, healthcare, food, taxes, etc) preventing them
from accumulating wealth. Until we reverse the trend of stagnating wages and
rising expenses and pay people more for their work and/or reduce the cost of
living, people will not be wealthy.

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timavr
Probably, because for 99% of people, this is not a goal. Most people want
physical/mental health and tonnes of dopamine.

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mbfg
Mostly it's bad luck of your circumstance.

