

Hedge Fund Manager: Goodbye and Good Luck - tortilla
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/daily-brief/2008/10/17/hedge-fund-manager-goodbye-and-f-you

======
biohacker42
Wow, a lot of common sense and then BAM - Linux & Hemp, I wasn't expecting
that.

Not that I don't agree with it, but weird seeing that, I guess that guy is a
hippie finance nerd. (I mean that in the best way possible).

~~~
bgutierrez
I don't know about _common_ sense.

~~~
biohacker42
I think that _government doesn't work, merit is often overridden by
connections, too much greed is pointless, in time we're (almost) all
forgotten_ are all common sense things to say.

What's odd is that he would use Linux as a metaphor, who but a hacker would
get that?

~~~
fallentimes
I think you'd be surprised.

What many people on HN consider common sense (e.g. Open ID, use complete
sentences, use simple design for consumer sites) is not common sense to the
general public (e.g. MOM, USE GMAIL INSTEAD OF HOTMAIL - CHRIST).

~~~
neilc
OpenID is a steaming pile, and I don't think there's anything particularly
wrong with Hotmail -- I use Gmail personally, but if you're not a heavy email
user, Hotmail is perfectly adequate (and integrates better with the rest of
the MSN web properties).

~~~
fallentimes
Then she complains to me about the spam.

~~~
tertius
Oh the spam. "Why do I get spam?" "I didn't tell anyone to send me these
emails about genitalia."

Gmail is not for moms I think.

------
jbenz
"They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen,
and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten."

The only thing that motivates me in my professional life more than money is
history. I would like to be remembered. I would like a student of history to
read about me in 100 years and think that I left this place better than I
found it.

Alas, this motivation doesn't stick well in my head, and the money is always
there for the taking.

I like his point that people simply earning money will not be remembered. He's
made his money, and he's OK without being remembered. He can now relax (Which
by the way, is why money is such a high motivating factor for me, personally.
I don't particularly love the sight of money, but I believe it can buy peace
of mind.)

~~~
jhancock
I'm not trying to be insulting. But your post is interesting. You claim not to
be motivated by money, but are motivated by a desired to be remembered (fame).
I can't properly dissect the ego, but I think both the desire for money and
fame stem from similar places. That is, I'm not sure they're that different.

I have often though that if we ever do want a society based on merit and
humanity, we need to get control of runaway egos. Maybe this requires a gene
modification, so maybe we are too many years from it. Who knows. I would love
to locate and find remedy for the "asshole gene".

~~~
fallentimes
I'm actually the opposite of the OP. I would like to have enough money for
myself, friends & family never have to worry about it in my life time. But I
never ever want to be famous.

One of my great fears would be having complete strangers (not founders, not
YCers, not HNers) regularly recognize me. Starting your own business, no
matter what it is, certainly causes some loss of privacy, but I'd prefer that
100 years from now no one gives a shit about who I was or what I did. Because
if they did, it more than likely means I did something wrong.

~~~
jhancock
When you say "would like to have enough money for myself, friends & family
never have to worry about it in my life time."...

there are two ways to go about this. One is to have a society that allows you
to feel secure in that you will always be able to have an income stream that
enables high quality of life. The second is to gather enough FU money so you
can provide for yourself without regard to what the rest of society does.

The second route is what most have been doing. And for good reason; that's
mostly all our society allows, there are few occupations or opportunity for
taking the high road. The trouble is this route doesn't "scale" as a solution
for everyone. This route is "get out of my way, I'm taking care of myself,
family, and friends. This requires you grab a bunch of equity. And that's the
part that doesn't scale to everyone and therefore not a sustainable model.

~~~
fallentimes
I'm also going the second route. It does scale and I'm going to make others
rich in the process - creating wealth is not zero sum. And I never said "get
out of my way" :).

 _"We don't take steps to redress inequalities of looks, friends, or sex life.
We don't grab a kidney from you to save someone's life, even though that
health difference was unfair brute luck. Redistribution of wealth has some
role in maintaining a stable democracy and preventing starvation. But the
power of wealth redistribution to produce net value is quite limited. The
power of wealth creation to produce net value is extraordinary. Most of
America's poor are already among the best-off of all humans in world history.
We should be putting our resources, including our advocacy and our
intellectual resources, into wealth creation as much as we can." -Tyler Cowen_

~~~
jhancock
My reply was to build on your comment, not to tear down your position.

Creating wealth is not a zero sum game, but... because noone can be certain of
the proper amount of FU money one needs, you overreach (I don't mean "you"
you, I mean anyone). It is precisely this that creates hordes of wealth
"locked up". This is a highly inefficient model and does not scale to "all"
people. You reach a point very quickly where maybe less than 20% can
participate before you create inflation and devalue the equity, which in turn
makes people raise their "FU quotient".

It creates a culture of continual acquisition of wealth due to the fear that
not to do so means your relative wealth will decline. But what if everyone
slows down? What if you can follow a well understood path to financial
security that did not rob you of your life as a youth or your life as a parent
or of your life as a spouse?

I'm not saying you or anyone else is a bad person for pursuing wealth. I am
saying the model we have in which to do so is flawed. Most of us are aware it
is flawed but don't bother to describe or attempt to fix it as there appears
to be no alternate solution (i.e. we only live in one economy, we don't get to
go hang out in a different one if we find the one we're in unappealing or
flawed).

My hypothesis is that the only/best timing for creating alternate solutions is
in harsh times. Times when people are hurting and willing to open their minds
to new things. After all, this is the original secret of any entrepreneur:
"find someone who is hurting, he'll take a chance on a tiny company he's never
heard of." I think the same lessons apply to changing our local and global
economy.

------
stcredzero
"reigned in?" He asserts that the top-tier schools have been producing straw
men -- suckers for the other sides of his trades. I think he's right. The
level of education in this country has fallen across the board.

~~~
sundeep
yeah , that was very jarring.

is it weird that it was? he's clearly a _very_ intelligent and accomplished
man ..

~~~
jambo
So intelligent he was able to figure out that Adam Smith was secretly an
American!

------
tortilla
I guess this is a perfect example of "fuck you money."

~~~
marvin
To his defense, he didn't actually say "fuck you" - that was a gracious
editorial spin.

~~~
niels_olson
:s/gracious/gratuitous/

~~~
marvin
Thanks, English isn't my native language.

------
ashishk
it's great to see people who can be so irrationally ambitious at first but
become rational AFTER they've achieved significant success

~~~
bgutierrez
I don't think it was rationality or a lack of it. It sounded like he couldn't
stomach the business anymore.

Or, he didn't feel like exposing his wealth to the markets for a while. Let's
see if he ever comes back.

------
dejb
He made 866% betting AGAINST the subprime collapse? (from the opening sentence
of the article). That doesn't make sense. Surely they must mean betting FOR
the subprime collapse. Or am I missing something?

~~~
ojbyrne
Yes, if you click on the "866 percent" link it says he bet against the
subprime market. Sloppy wording.

------
JulianMorrison
1\. I've got mine.

2\. I'm taking my ball and going home.

3\. The sky is falling.

4\. Y'all can have socialism. We'll call it "meritocracy".

5\. Also, weed is kinda groovy.

~~~
neilc
Exactly. The guy is plainly a crackpot. Making 866% return in a single year
makes you lucky, not necessarily intelligent or prone to have an intelligent
take on the problems of society. His suggestion for government is particularly
laughable:

*My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man's interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles.

~~~
neilk
Why is this laughable?

~~~
JulianMorrison
He might as well have said "I propose we solve the problem of making Big
Government work".

"Solve it how?"

"Details, schmetails. That's busywork for the little people, I'm an ideas
man."

~~~
krschultz
Isn't that what John McCain said about medicare in the 2nd debate?

"What we have to do with Medicare is have a commission, of the smartest people
in America come together, come up with recommendations, and then like the base
closing commission idea we had, then we should have congress vote up or down"

Not to make this political, but why is it laughable when this guy says it, but
not laughable when one of our 2 candidates for president says it?

~~~
JulianMorrison
It isn't? I laughed.

------
j2d2
Marijuana was not made illegal promptly after WW2. It was illegalized during
Nixon's presidency in 1970.

------
ChaitanyaSai
Why so much resentment for those with rich parents?. A genetic endowment of
intelligence and conscientiousness is also a stroke of luck, There's a good
chance that his regressed-to-the-mean progeny will avail some of that
financial fortune and social capital in getting ahead.

~~~
prospero
Intelligence is a capacity, not a trait. You don't get opportunities in life
simply because you're smart, you get them because you've built upon your
intelligence, applied it, and in some way proven yourself. Inherited wealth
exists irrespective of effort.

~~~
nihilocrat
> You don't get opportunities in life simply because you're smart,

I really wish I knew this earlier. For a significant part of my adolescence,
even through part of college, I believed intelligence alone would prove your
worth. Now, I feel like people think you're actually dumb if you don't have a
list of major accomplishments in your wake; you tend to get that feeling when
interviewing for a job.

~~~
davi
Sounds like you're getting to an age where people expect your intelligence to
have panned out productively in some way or another.

------
master
Here is a man who understands how to live.

------
redorb
Always good to see someone get out while the getting is good ...

------
noodle
"so long and thanks for all the fish"

------
bkj123
Where can I track political contributions as well as voting records? I'd like
to see which politicians received the most contributions from various
industries and compare it with their voting record. Is anyone doing this
already?

~~~
blakeweb
I seem to remember hearing about something similar this past weekend at
<http://conference.freeculture.org> in berkeley, but I can't recall it.

If you're interested in the area, I'd ask Joshua Tauberer, razor.occams.info,
who made <http://govtrack.us/>. He's really into it and I think could quickly
give you a complete overview of what's been done and what hasn't.

------
popschedule
This guy is truly a bad ass.

