Woozle Hypertwin

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/116339351277198152

I have a lot of thoughts on this because I did online entrepreneurship from ~1997 - 2011 (and am planning to get back into it, because, among other things, it was kinda fun when it wasn't an anxiety-packed stressfest), but I'll just respond to this bit for now (emphasis mine):

And the whole time they were getting further and further from the thing that actually creates economic value, which is: find a real problem, solve it for real people, care enough to stick around and keep improving. The boring thing. The thing that takes years. The thing that is, to be absolutely clear about this, not passive.

That, for me, was the fun part.

...and also, there were times when it did feel a little like "money showing up overnight", when orders came in -- but I had a policy of not debiting until actually shipping the product (which apparently confused a lot of people), and then stuff had to actually be shipped (that was the whole point, the main value I was providing) -- so each new "you've got money!" meant a little work before actually getting the money.

#vbz

Apr 3 at 2:58pmWeb
Show threadJessie1d ago

@woozle Interesting read and also to extrapolate a little it is the idea that a lot of people are likely burnt out by even the very idea of real employment, that working to make someone else richer isn't exactly a good reason to work even if it also means their own survival. Passive income works for the rich, for the people that can throw their money around.

To me passive income was about the idea your money through interest or other investments would basically allow you to retire. The passive part is that it is generating money all the time with no work. That work is for your investment manager to handle (unless you are beyond the point of needing more income but that never stopped the rich).

It is the modern day gold rush, people want to get rich so first you buy a shovel, then when that doesn't really work you move to selling shovels but the market is completely saturated because there isn't really any gold and everyone is selling shovels. It is a rarity of hardwork and commitment but a lot of people don't get that. Even before all this passive income type businesses most new businesses fail, just not at these rates.

Even authors are not making passive income. They are working on the next book unless they get extremely lucky. Everything is a treadmill, everything takes more and more work. Work goes in, money ideally comes out. It doesn't matter if you are working for someone else, yourself or just creating something like a book. Effectively work = money unless you have so much money you can make other people's work = money for you (with minor amounts going to them).

I guess it all comes back to universal basic income. When people don't have to worry about survival then businesses about creating are done for a real reason instead of "making money for me". These people are basically trying to carve out their own UBI. People are unfulfilled and so anything that just makes it easier is their solution and you end up with everyone selling snake oil trying to get rich quick.

With the internet we have given everyone the tools to do everything a lot faster. It is filled with snake oil stores, it is filled with "I can fix your problems" or "I can make you rich", all the old cons are basically multiplied to degrees that would never work in the real world because seeing all the hundreds of snake oil sellers in a market square would be alarm bells ringing and also they would be too many of them to even get beyond a single sale let alone enough to make a real income.

We are talking about a system of broken people trying to not just survive but be the next "insanely rich person", problem is their don't have the cheat code. The vast majority of insanely rich people (not just rich but never could spend this money to the end of the universe levels rich) had the cheat code of starting rich.

Want passive income? Be rich. The gold rush of the internet is over, the shovel selling stage is also over, now everyone is trying to sell the technique of selling shovels in a gold rush not noticing there isn't even a gold rush anymore and that everyone knows the safest and best option is to sell shovels. Information has spread too much and people are wondering why no one wants to buy their shovels to dig for gold when the mine already closed because the gold ran out long ago...

Show threadJessie1d ago
@woozle Something else I thought of on top of this is people also only hear about the success stories. You hear about the richest man in the world because he can't shut up and has enough money to make himself heard constantly. You don't hear about the person that failed because they don't have the money to throw around. Confirmation bias strikes again...
Show threadWoozle Hypertwin23h ago

@Asuyuia  

I think you've put your finger on it, yeah: we all know (accurately) that there are a lot of people (numerically, if not percentage-wise) who will have the resources they need to survive comfortably regardless of whether they work -- and also that most of them got there through various forms of luck (mostly heritage), rather than hard work -- so it's easy to sell the idea that people who are not in those circumstances can also get there without hard work.

On top of that, there's the very valid understanding that the overwhelming majority of employment does not really contribute to society and in fact may be making the situation worse (by concentrating wealth) -- and also that the people deciding what you need to be doing, as an employee, seem determined to make bad decisions (for which the system under which they work seems to reward them, if anything) -- so entrepreneurship becomes doubly appealing: make your own decisions and have a better chance at upward mobility.

...and yeah, confirmation bias and survivorship bias seem to play pretty big roles as well.

In an age where we (as employees) are increasingly being replaced by automation, of course, the message is clear: it doesn't make sense to require people to work in order to survive, because there's less and less paid work for us to do -- but also-of-course the ruling classes are too used to needing to be able to boss people around for their comfort, and psychologically cannot let go and accept even the tiniest downward distribution.

Show threadJessie22h ago

@woozle The funny thing is that this whole problem of this passive income is actually just taking all the crap the ultra rich do and putting it into the hands of the masses. Consume, consume, consume...

It is like how there are millions of people writing books, making music, creating games, anything creative is a flooded market. There are so many people and honestly we are in a very weird time. We have gone from 90%+ having to make food to keep everyone alive to a very small percentage. We have so many systems in place and they are constantly finding we need less people in those roles. Where do we put these people?

The ultra rich WANT people to work, they want to keep people forced to focus on survival because it turns our attention away from them. We have a system that no matter what we can't just throw people into it because we are constantly not in need of more people even with all the made to consume products that exists. It is a constant "we need people employed and working to survive while we also don't need or want people working for us". People are the MOST expensive part of a business so of course it is the place where costs will be cut. Driving the profit margins up means we run into the problem of now we need to remove people from the workplace but then who will buy the products? Who will endlessly consume worthless crap? How will people get money?

The system is crumbling as the cancerous design starts to kill it. There can be no balance because it is a system built on infinite growth with finite resources and finite demand. People don't need endless products. People don't need to replace a product that doesn't break or can be repaired easily. This leads to so much waste and products designed to break often to keep people consuming.

An endless ouroboros where the system itself is the problem. It keeps eating itself and the orphan crushing machine stays on...

Show threadJessie22h ago

@woozle It also has created an environment of mental health issues not even related to work itself but the idea of achievement goals never being reached and always feeling like an under achiever because you decided to... *checks notes*... rest? have a hobby? have a life outside achieving anything?

The fact we now have a way to measure success and also a way that basically no one is reaching it becomes a crippling cycle of depression and mental health problems.

Add onto this that anyone trapped enough to "win" at work now has a whole host of issues related to money addiction makes it a game of no winners and only destruction of everything...

Show threadWoozle Hypertwin22h ago

@Asuyuia Again,  

My solution lately, in a nutshell: "Get all the sensible people together to make the decisions, because good things will never happen again if we keep letting the authoritarians run everything."

Show threadJessie22h ago

@woozle Anyone that wants power is the last person you should give it to. Hence the problem that the most sane and best rulers never rule...

That and the methods to get power might as well include selling your soul.

Show threadWoozle Hypertwin21h ago
@Asuyuia This is why I see a system of anarchic collaboration as an essential: we need to become powerful, but we need to do it in a way that doesn't attract powermongers and does attract egalitarians.
Show threadJessie21h ago
@woozle The problem with any system that isn't capitalist is that it is surrounded by enemies and capitalists like to invade and spread "freedom".
Show threadWoozle Hypertwin21h ago

@Asuyuia That's why it needs to be carefully designed, rather than coming together naturally.

(To put it another way: It needs to be designed to come together naturally in a way that naturally excludes authoritarians.)

Show threadWoozle Hypertwin21h ago

@Asuyuia ...and on another fork of that topic:

I think part of the "market saturation" for creative works is -- despite the apparent ease of propagating them -- the difficulty of discovery, the financial friction imposed by discovery platforms.

Like... where do you go now to discover what music is really good?

It used to be local radio stations, but now they're all centrally-owned and programmed.

There's Spotify, but (aside from being evil) its discovery operates via proprietary algorithms rather than individual connections. (...which you could argue is moving the goalposts when compared to radio, but... I could counterargue that.)

There's Bandcamp, which is less evil (although reportedly still kinda Evil Lite™) but not great at discovery.

I'm probably overlooking a lot of stuff, and not even getting into other forms of art, and this is a much larger conversation than a single post... but I do feel like it's part of the problem. You can put stuff out there for decades (ask me how I know) without getting any clarity on where it falls on the "sucks" to "really good" spectrum.

Show threadJessie21h ago

@woozle Generally what is shared or whatever I hear in passing and like for my music but I am not the biggest music person. Radio might not even have existed for me...

But yeah another problem, pleasing the algorithms...

Nope, I'm out!