In so far as their motivations are global instability, climate change, and the rest - I'd agree. I wouldn't if we're talking about the headline. We could stand less pressure on the planet's finite resources.
So many books that could've been an article. I try to save myself time by checking Goodreads but it's not always clear as I'm more critical than the average person. Reading a preview in Google Books helps but you only get so many pages before you're cut off. Appreciate that lately new books are sometimes featured in pubs with an excerpt.
For hundreds of years there have been incentives (money) to publish books, and yet in 2026 we still haven’t worked out how to monetarily incentivise authors of single articles without bundling them with articles or other authors you wouldn’t read (because you only care about a single article damnit
The worst is scifibooks that explore ideas but the authors afraid of literary critics jam in "real" characters with real "drama" to satisfy a crowd who does not get the purpose of the medium, even while they life inside one of those accelerando shortstories now.
how are you going to compare cars with no fixed location premium with housing? also utilization is totally different - cars sit ~95% of the time, housing can be nearly round the clock if you work at home. transportation is more like a utility/commodity whereas there are so many personal factors for where to live.
I get to feeling this way when I look at pictures of neighborhoods that have been leveled for the car and what it's done to the civic fabric - e.g. historic black neighborhoods in Oakland, eminent domain in SF, etc. It hurts thinking about what could have been every time you hear of a road death or have a harrowing experience on foot/bike.
you have to deal with selection bias - those are presumably very different groups of people selecting into the type of environment they favor at some level, albeit aconstrained by affordability
You don't need millions - if things go modestly well and you have a high savings rate, you can get out in 5-10 and draw enough to cover modest means. I do agree that people eying passive income maybe have a different patience / willingness to sacrifice & self-teach threshold but the calculus of grinding for a few years to escape has its adherents.
Yup. This was my approach. Left my business a decade ago with low six figures cash in my pocket. It would have lasted about 18 months at my existing burn rate.
So I moved to a cabin in the woods in a country with a low cost of living, and stuck pretty much all of it in the markets.
Had I not done that, I would have had to go back to work - instead I lived a modest life (€500/mo, max) off the income from putting my apartment on Airbnb, and regained my sanity after a decade of relentless work while my investments did their thing.
Anyway, it’s a decade on, still haven’t done a jot of “work”, and the assets are now worth several million, and are being redeployed to continue to maximise value growth - and we now treat ourselves to spending months travelling at exorbitant budgets, real estate, expensive toys - and had enough stability to decide to have a kid.
So yeah, it’s possible - although had we grown at 6%/yr rather than an average of 80%/yr, it would be a different picture - but I firmly believe there are plenty of other opportunities for rapid capital growth elsewhere in the markets, and yet to come. I’m just some average dude who buys equities on vibes and then sits on them for a decade. If I of all people managed it, others can.
Way to bury the lede. Being able to average 80%/yr returns takes talent and skill and is a type of work. The type of work, by the way, that is rewarded with millions at finance companies in NYC, or even more if you launch your own trading shop.
I’d sooner eat crow than work for a living again - and this ain’t work. I just think while I’m out for a hike, driving, whatever, and decide to make some investments in X, Y, Z next time there’s a decent looking moment to realise and reallocate some profits.
Plus, the kind of investing I do would never fly in a hedge fund - I’d just make the risk desk piss itself with laughter.
Nope. I just think about the probable shape of the future, and who benefits.
I stick with the fields I know and understand - tech, engineering, sciences - don’t go for long bets so much as “if this relatively predictable set of circumstances arises, who will inevitably benefit”.
For example, in 2017 I was keeping abreast with ML research, and realised that within a decade this stuff was going to be huge - so I bought Nvidia and their supply chain and sat on it. Also Tesla as I figured as if I saw them as an adjacent incumbent beneficiary of an AI boom, then others would, too.
I’ve followed that chain of logic through - caught the nuclear renaissance in its entirety, as well as predictable resource squeezes.
So - that’s just one of my trees of bets - but my whole thesis is “predict a future, model out what that looks like, place bets accordingly”.
Same - I wasn't sure where I'd stop (always been a minimalist anyways, savings rate above 2/3) but ran into a health issue so seeing what the future holds: taking another crack at the 'career' or maybe something more low key that aligns with my passions or a side project. I just want more time for learning, everything else feels like a distraction.
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