Rents, passive income, capital gains are tax-legible subsets of the larger nebulous category of return on risk.
The optimal is probably <30% otherwise you suffer curse of resources.
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Hard to actually estimate. For eg carefully researched conservative investments are mostly return on effort even if treated as return in risk. You put in effort to lower the courage needed. The courage needed to take an irreversible action is the actual measure of risk.
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Not really. It’s more that courage doesn’t actually teach you very much even though returns can be high. It’s good to be courageous, but to the extent it’s a substitute for thought, you give up learning and growth.
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Replying to @vgr
Is it mostly the volatility aspect of the curse of resources?
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Eg: meta-multiple choice test
a) Lazy and not cowardly: guess, score 25%
b) Industrious and cowardly: study, score 100%
c) Lazy and courageous: steal answers, score 100%
d) Industrious and courageous: phone in test you don’t care about, score 60%, do something better with time
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d is a calculated risk: you could be wrong about “something better” and subject was worth learning more than whatever you blew it off for
c is curse of resources effect of risk-taking courage if subject was worthwhile. You just robbed future self of knowledge by being courageous
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I’ve probably taken more risks than optimal and suffered curse of resources to some extent... to a degree I’ve taken the “easy A’s” path through life because I’ve been decent at spotting good risks to take. Might have been better for me to have been forced down harder paths.
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The costs are now becoming apparent. I wish I had more hard-earned skills now than I do. Skills that would be very fulfilling to have now. The downside of “work smarter, not harder” is that you lose the subtle positive externalities of working harder in terms of more growth.
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Sometimes the point is to do the hard work. There’s no point being clever and figuring out a machine to log 10k steps on pedometer just to get insurance discount. You’re ultimately just fooling yourself.
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Replying to
I’ve been trying to come up with a name for this kind of work.
Non-scaleable
Non-glamorous
Irrationally high ROI
So far it’s “dishwashing.”
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That makes too much sense. If I’ve learned anything from you it’s that neologisms must be surrealist


