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> I will export millions of dollars in products that I produced here, or I will die trying Why? Really. Maybe I’m in a midlife crises but I care about money le

> I will export millions of dollars in products that I produced here, or I will die trying Why? Really. Maybe I’m in a midlife crises but I care about money less and less. I used to get a a lot of satisfaction from the simple fact of seeing the number on my bank account increase. Not so much in the past decade. My computer, phone, speaker, camera and other tech toys are amazing and not that expensive. Great food and beverage are not that hard to come by. A good house is indeed expensive in most of the world, but after that, what does one need that requires “millions of dollars”?

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Build a school for those left behind.
- klipt 4y ago
  If you want to build schools, why not get a job at the department of education?
  - omginternets 4y ago
    Is that a serious question?
    - klipt 4y ago
      Look I know hacker news is biased towards thinking the solution to everything is "do a startup, become a billionaire, use your money to solve it" but there are legitimately other ways of getting things done, for example engaging with the civic process to get things solved through democracy.
      - omginternets 4y ago
        I couldn't agree more. Where I think we disagree is the idea that working for the Dept. of Education will have one "opening schools" in the same (meaningful) way as the parent comment intends.
    - badpun 4y ago
      If one invests the ambition into rising into a position of power in the department of education, their impact on educating the youth will be many times bigger than that of the rich guy's who just throws some money at school building, but otherwise has no clue and no impact. This is often why ambitious people choose the public servant career path - they want to have a real impact.
  - Slava_Propanei 4y ago
    [dead]
woobar 4y ago
> what does one need that requires “millions of dollars” Stop working?
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Not dying when you no longer have health insurance
  - tambourine_man 4y ago
    Most countries are not like the US with its crazy health system.
    - CydeWeys 4y ago
      You still get better and prompter health care when you pay more money in pretty much every country.
      - tambourine_man 4y ago
        Like most things, it depends. There’s no money you can pay to get a donated organ faster in most decent countries. There are treatments too expensive for even the best health plans and are only available through government sponsored systems. You couldn’t buy yourself a vaccine ahead of anyone else for any price during the covid peak, etc. Health is as much a collective issue as it is an individual one.
        coryrc 4y ago
        Those things are all available to the ultra-wealthy. For your last example: https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/03/how-rich-and-privileged-can-skip-the-line-for-covid19-vaccines/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/03/how-rich-and-privileged-...
        tambourine_man 4y ago
ip26 4y ago
Millions of dollars of product (e.g. gross revenue) is a statement about scale and impact, not personal profit.
PostOnce 4y ago
Let me answer you honestly and in depth: Why? Why not? If I am alive, I may as well make an effort, since I have a finite time to do so. It's fun. It's a challenge. I know a couple of men in their 50s, one is relatively wealthy (some tens of millions of dollars), and I have often seen him on top of a machine with a wrench in his hand at 6am. Sometimes it's 3am. He starts a new company every year or two and adds it to his holdings. He owns farms and factories, and runs all of them personally. (it baffles me that he has enough time) I know another man who's relatively broke (owns his house, not much else) and says he is too old to try any new ventures. I suspect a large reason for their wealth disparity is their attitude disparity. Money is also more than the ability to acquire toys. Money is power, and money is freedom. Money is time. Money can pay other people to save you time. You can save thousands of hours over the course of your life paying other people to mow your lawn, wash your car, paint your house, repair your engine, and re-tile your bathroom. Money can buy you citizenship anywhere you want, and if war comes, you can just pay to fly away. Money can establish schools, medical research orgs, and human rights charities. Money can buy media and reshape politics, or it can pay for scientific instruments that have no other funding, and it can secure the future for people (or other things) you care about. Paul Allen built a telescope array, the world's largest airplane, the living computer museum, a cell research institute and a brain research institute, and a ton of other fantastic stuff that would otherwise have no funding. Howard Hughes Medical Institute is still one of the wealthiest charities in the world, he's been dead for 50 years and we are all still benefiting. That wouldn't be the case if he spent it all on yachts and mansions. Money can keep an old-growth forest from turning into an apartment complex. Money also makes all kinds of new things possible, and allows you to do things "The Right Way", i.e. to overengineer for the sake of beauty and reliability, cost be damned. Money can replace a cinderblock and plywood hovel with marble and oak. Money can build you a house that can ignore tornadoes and earthquakes. Money can pay engineers and machinists to create things that would never be commercially produced. Money means I can work on what I want to work on: difficult and time-consuming things. Money means I can buy the local schools all of the equipment I think the kids should have, and more importantly, I could pay for staff to make that equipment useful and not just sit in storage because none of the teachers understand telescopes or computers or 3D printers. I could pay for our town to have a planetarium. On that note, if I were rich enough, I could embarass Zeiss and build the most ridiculous optical planetarium projector ever known. Like it or not, money is also respect, awe even. I want to be the husband most wives could only dream of, in terms of success. I want to buy my children education they can't get at school, by doing things with them the school cannot afford to do. Money means you can participate in expensive hobbies that introduce you to people that you'd otherwise never meet. Those people are often interesting. I want to set an example for my fellow citizen, and show them that it doesn't matter that we live in a shitty town in the middle of nowhere, if you just refuse to concede that our disadvantages cripple us, you can still win. We're human beings after all. I don't even own a house yet, but I started another company 6 months ago, and this time I have no business partners to blame and no outside investors. It's all me. Moving to a small town in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the world just makes it more fun, it's life on a higher difficulty setting. I relish the challenge. I could probably rant about this for hours, it's not that we need the money, it's that without it, so much less is possible. We (humans) just achieved fusion, and that machine cost billions. It wasn't a toy. Money is the power to build the future.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Build a school for those left behind.

klipt 4y ago
If you want to build schools, why not get a job at the department of education?
- omginternets 4y ago
  Is that a serious question?
  - klipt 4y ago
    Look I know hacker news is biased towards thinking the solution to everything is "do a startup, become a billionaire, use your money to solve it" but there are legitimately other ways of getting things done, for example engaging with the civic process to get things solved through democracy.
    - omginternets 4y ago
      I couldn't agree more. Where I think we disagree is the idea that working for the Dept. of Education will have one "opening schools" in the same (meaningful) way as the parent comment intends.
  - badpun 4y ago
    If one invests the ambition into rising into a position of power in the department of education, their impact on educating the youth will be many times bigger than that of the rich guy's who just throws some money at school building, but otherwise has no clue and no impact. This is often why ambitious people choose the public servant career path - they want to have a real impact.
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]

woobar 4y ago

> what does one need that requires “millions of dollars” Stop working?

fnordpiglet 4y ago
Not dying when you no longer have health insurance
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  Most countries are not like the US with its crazy health system.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    You still get better and prompter health care when you pay more money in pretty much every country.
    - tambourine_man 4y ago
      Like most things, it depends. There’s no money you can pay to get a donated organ faster in most decent countries. There are treatments too expensive for even the best health plans and are only available through government sponsored systems. You couldn’t buy yourself a vaccine ahead of anyone else for any price during the covid peak, etc. Health is as much a collective issue as it is an individual one.
      - coryrc 4y ago
        Those things are all available to the ultra-wealthy. For your last example: https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/03/how-rich-and-privileged-can-skip-the-line-for-covid19-vaccines/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/03/how-rich-and-privileged-...
        tambourine_man 4y ago

ip26 4y ago

Millions of dollars of product (e.g. gross revenue) is a statement about scale and impact, not personal profit.

PostOnce 4y ago

Let me answer you honestly and in depth: Why? Why not? If I am alive, I may as well make an effort, since I have a finite time to do so. It's fun. It's a challenge. I know a couple of men in their 50s, one is relatively wealthy (some tens of millions of dollars), and I have often seen him on top of a machine with a wrench in his hand at 6am. Sometimes it's 3am. He starts a new company every year or two and adds it to his holdings. He owns farms and factories, and runs all of them personally. (it baffles me that he has enough time) I know another man who's relatively broke (owns his house, not much else) and says he is too old to try any new ventures. I suspect a large reason for their wealth disparity is their attitude disparity. Money is also more than the ability to acquire toys. Money is power, and money is freedom. Money is time. Money can pay other people to save you time. You can save thousands of hours over the course of your life paying other people to mow your lawn, wash your car, paint your house, repair your engine, and re-tile your bathroom. Money can buy you citizenship anywhere you want, and if war comes, you can just pay to fly away. Money can establish schools, medical research orgs, and human rights charities. Money can buy media and reshape politics, or it can pay for scientific instruments that have no other funding, and it can secure the future for people (or other things) you care about. Paul Allen built a telescope array, the world's largest airplane, the living computer museum, a cell research institute and a brain research institute, and a ton of other fantastic stuff that would otherwise have no funding. Howard Hughes Medical Institute is still one of the wealthiest charities in the world, he's been dead for 50 years and we are all still benefiting. That wouldn't be the case if he spent it all on yachts and mansions. Money can keep an old-growth forest from turning into an apartment complex. Money also makes all kinds of new things possible, and allows you to do things "The Right Way", i.e. to overengineer for the sake of beauty and reliability, cost be damned. Money can replace a cinderblock and plywood hovel with marble and oak. Money can build you a house that can ignore tornadoes and earthquakes. Money can pay engineers and machinists to create things that would never be commercially produced. Money means I can work on what I want to work on: difficult and time-consuming things. Money means I can buy the local schools all of the equipment I think the kids should have, and more importantly, I could pay for staff to make that equipment useful and not just sit in storage because none of the teachers understand telescopes or computers or 3D printers. I could pay for our town to have a planetarium. On that note, if I were rich enough, I could embarass Zeiss and build the most ridiculous optical planetarium projector ever known. Like it or not, money is also respect, awe even. I want to be the husband most wives could only dream of, in terms of success. I want to buy my children education they can't get at school, by doing things with them the school cannot afford to do. Money means you can participate in expensive hobbies that introduce you to people that you'd otherwise never meet. Those people are often interesting. I want to set an example for my fellow citizen, and show them that it doesn't matter that we live in a shitty town in the middle of nowhere, if you just refuse to concede that our disadvantages cripple us, you can still win. We're human beings after all. I don't even own a house yet, but I started another company 6 months ago, and this time I have no business partners to blame and no outside investors. It's all me. Moving to a small town in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the world just makes it more fun, it's life on a higher difficulty setting. I relish the challenge. I could probably rant about this for hours, it's not that we need the money, it's that without it, so much less is possible. We (humans) just achieved fusion, and that machine cost billions. It wasn't a toy. Money is the power to build the future.