He’s a Trumpie but in this case I wouldn’t hold that against him. Nobody can really prep for something like this. You’d spend all day tail-risk-proofing a business idea and never starting anything if you were to worry at this level. But still... something unsympathetic here.
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I think I just don’t like economic rents. Even if it’s something as simple as an inflatable house. But rather than trying to estimate “rentishness” of a business by the vague definition of economics, I prefer to apply my own definition
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A business is based on rents to the extent it does *not* require ongoing investment of thinking to keep it going. Ie if all you need is capital goods and formulaic labor that can be performed by interchangeable people, your business is based on rents.
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Two factors can force you to think:
1. The presence of real competition (I suspect this guy was a local monopoly in Roseville)
2. The business being a knowledge work business where the basic output requires thinky labor that cannot be done by interchangeable parts people
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Interestingly by this definition, even a super hardworking street food vendor is a rentier. Small cart capex, interchangeable formulaic labor, local monopoly on one street block. Look at say New York street food. Why do they all follow 2-3 patterns? (hotdogs, shawarma...)
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I guess I have low sympathy for people who try to build businesses with the goal of being able to stop thinking at some point. This is why I kinda detest the internet equivalent — the holy grail of “passive income”
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It’s okay to want to stop thinking about one aspect of a business, via automation or figuring it out once and for all, but if you seek to eliminate all thinking input, you kinda deserve the risk exposures you get. Even if you’re working 14 hour days rather than idling in Bali.
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Retirement and disability exception case
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Replying to @adamgomulka
I’m willing to make an exception for retirement, since that’s a universal future of falling cognitive capacity for anyone who continues living. It’s a bit like a disability we can all look forward to.
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If you’re doing your best thinking to survive and reality still gets inside your OODA loop and trips you up... that’s an honorable stumble and I can respect that. I’d vote for a bit of a communal bailout for you. It’s conscious cognitive free-riding that I have a hard time with.
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To be fair to inflatable house guy, I can’t tell from the story whether he was giving it his honorable best shot in terms of thinking-input or not. I’ve met many like him, with a good eye for basic arbitrage based businesses and a very narrow kind of transactional thinking.
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I guess in Darwinian terns, cognitive free riding is like being a niche colonizing species rather than a generally adaptive one. Which also explains why I dislike “find your niche” business thinking. Niche thinking is for insects.
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Something about this doesn't sit well with me. It could be my problem. But, I don't like the idea of zero capex / zero marginal cost businesses being able to look down on those who're interested in the physical world.
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Remember, most of us are not zero capex by choice. We're it because we can't access capital to back our capabilities. So we have to rely on public commons capital assets like the internet.
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