
How to Get Rich (without Getting Lucky) - vkdelta
https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
======
merricksb
Discussed at the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17203304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17203304)
(647 points/85 days ago/515 comments)

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slivym
Why is this on hacker news? It's just full of vague, unactionable statements.

>Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you
sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the
social hierarchy.

Who doesn't want assets that earn while you sleep? No one needs to be told
they want that. What they need to be told is how they GET that from an entry
level software engineering position in GoogBook.

>If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.

This comes across very transparently as someone who CAN code, can't write
books, blog or record videos but doesn't respect any of those activities.

Do you want my sage advice? Don't denigrate the things you can't do.

~~~
gojomo
> Why is this on hacker news?

Because 55+ people upvoted it here. (And tens of thousands liked/retweeted on
Twitter.)

> Who doesn't want assets that earn while you sleep? No one needs to be told
> they want that.

Many are happy with 'safe' jobs at comfortable wages! And even many who
ostensibly want to be 'rich' need to be reminded that a wealth other-than-by-
selling-your-waking-hours is even possible! There are so many social defaults
that encourage a wage-work-only path, and obscure other practices.

> What they need to be told is how they GET that from an entry level software
> engineering position in GoogBook.

If people "need to be told" some paint-by-numbers idiot-proof checklist of
exact actions to wealth, they're going to be disappointed. These sort of
impressionistic hints are about the best they'll find – at least in a short
format.

> This comes across very transparently as someone who CAN code, can't write
> books, blog or record videos but doesn't respect any of those activities.

I believe it's been a while since the author coded; on the other hand, he's
written & recorded videos a bunch recently. So your ability to interpret his
meaning – and whether he is "denigrating" any of these activities – is highly
suspect.

> Do you want my sage advice?

Maybe, I don't know. What have you written or accomplished that implies sagely
wisdom? Do you have any positive advice for becoming wealthy that's not just
criticizing someone else's recommendations?

> Don't denigrate the things you can't do.

Compared to this "don't", the full extent of your "sagely advice", the most
explicit "don't" in the author's recommendations is: "Don't partner with
cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling."

Is the author wrong to disparage such people, and would you instead recommend
partnering with cynics and pessimists, in order to become wealthy?

(I suppose that could work for certain kinds of snarky tabloid-journalism
projects. If that's your jam, go for it! I look forward to the 'Launch HN'
post when it has a site.)

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wslh
Bullshit with a lot of retweets and likes. You need basic education and
context to even follow this guide. It must include some premises.

~~~
agumonkey
trader philosophy in a tweet

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jarjoura
I agree with everything in the Twitter post, except the "without getting
lucky" part. You must already have wealth in order to practice any of his
suggestions.

~~~
zerr
And also you need luck for the birth lottery.

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amrrs
Better readability
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html)

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acjohnson55
I like a lot of his stuff, but this is some preachy swill. A whole lot of
opinions with very little support.

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sunstone
As a rule of thumb, most people who get rich after starting from not being
rich do it in real estate. How does this list explain or relate to this
empirical fact?

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namarie
This should be titled "how not to write". It's terribly vague.

~~~
gojomo
Aphoristic tweets are aphoristic. If you don't like this style of writing,
don't visit Twitter/tweetstorms.

~~~
namarie
Sure, but I mean, "Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you"?
I'm not sure how that helps at all.

~~~
AlexCoventry
In context, he means that leadership is difficult because you have to bring
people along, whereas automation doesn't require you to establish alignment
with anyone else. I'm skeptical that it ever works that way, but it's not
quite as woo as it sounds art first.

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whatshisface
> _Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth,
> relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest._

Compound interest and iterated games aren't particularly related. One example
of an "Iterated game" is playing prisoner's dillemma repeatedly with the same
person.

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comboy
There are many good resources you can find. But most people don't really think
"I want to get rich" and optimise their lives around it. Spreadsheet or a
piece of paper with a cashflow and some long term plan would be a good start.
How many people do that? I think at least on some subconscious level many
people know that's not what they are aiming for. They want to be around
interesting people doing something meaningful and in general have fun.
Acquiring wealth takes time and you can have much more fun in your 30s than in
your 70s. That's regarding HN types. For people with the lowest wage striving
to make the ends mee the problem is of course lack of knowledge, time to
acquire it, and time to get out of this local minima.

Theoretically, money is a wonderful thing, you give people what they want they
give you money. If you have a lot of money then the society owes you a lot.
But we have fiat. Money is getting created out of thin air and it's not just
bankers who get to be lucky, it leaks through out the society. Those with
money influence gov, gov gets unlimited spending, banks happily cooperate with
wealthy, and wealthy can afford actual storage of value like real estate or
gold apart from their investments.

I don't believe we can fix crazily widening gap without giving people access
to some real money. Gold is not very practical. Bitcoin is a great potential
candidate and I think people still underestimate how great positive impact it
can have on society (but big part of HN seems still butthurt about BTC, so
feel free to ignore the last sentence or suggest some other solution)

~~~
namarie
> For people with the lowest wage striving to make the ends mee the problem is
> of course lack of knowledge, time to acquire it, and time to get out of this
> local minima.

Also lack of opportunities for many.

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whack
Lot of very interesting advice, but I think it fails at its stated goal of
"How to get rich without getting lucky". Much of the advise is extremely hard
to follow and implement. For example, how can someone reliably _" arm yourself
with specific knowledge"_ if _" specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be
trained for"_? This is very hard to pull off, and most people will not succeed
at this, even if they work very hard at it.

Here's a much more reliable recipe for getting rich: Study your ass off in
school. Do whatever it takes to graduate with a stellar GPA, and letters of
recommendation. Attend the best University you can get into, with above
credentials. Pick a major with a proven track record of financial success,
such as Medicine/Software-Eng/Accounting etc. Get a job at a brand name
company. Continue working your ass off to impress your manager and colleagues.
Switch companies every 3-5 years, to maximize your compensation.

You're not going to be featured in any newspaper if you follow the above
strategy. But you can certainly become a multi-millionaire, even in your late
30s.

~~~
kostarelo
Are you going to be a multi-millionaire by working as Medicine/Software-
Eng/Accounting employee?

~~~
whack
Yes

~~~
kostarelo
Can you elaborate, please?

~~~
whack
If you're working at a FAANG company or equivalent in SF/NYC/SEA, you can get
to $250-350k in total-compensation before you turn 30. If you save and invest
a big chunk of this money in your 20s and 30s, you can plan on being a multi-
millionaire by your 40s.

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herbst
Especially the HN cloud should be able to understand that we can create long
lasting value out of essentially just time and electricity. It's not only
immobilia a well done content website can be a good long term investment as
well.

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pacomerh
I have the feeling that If you understand these tweets, then you don't need
this guide, because you already know what they're about. People who actually
need this guide also need a more in depth explanation of each point or at
least examples.

~~~
_louisr_
They're very useful as reminders. I understand the tweets but it helps to view
your personal career with them in mind, and having the list does help.

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sytelus
The only real take away here is understanding differece between wealth and
money. Naval should have stayed away from making “snake oil” assertions that
accumulating wealth can be done by anyone without regards to luck by simply
following idioms in his tweets.

The idea of passively generating money from wealth (aka capitalism) implicitly
requires that _someone else_ is working to generate money for you while you
sleep. You cannot have a society where everyone is wealthy and everyone is
passively generating all the income they need. So most of the wealth
necessarily must be in hands of few and path to wealth is necessarily hard
enough and probilistic (hence luck). There is only one scenario I can think of
where this won’t be true and that’s when we figure out if we can replace
robots as provider for all of our labor needs.

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abeppu
> The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah,
> Trump, Kanye, Elon.

Some of those names seems out of place on a list of "the most accountable
people."

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the_cat_kittles
what is this stupid shit: "The most accountable people have singular, public,
and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon." you guys are a big cult of
worshipping rich people. its so obvious.

