4 ms·

The way it shakes out is that there's no widely accessible way of escaping actual, ongoing work, which is what unmotivated people actually hear behind the words

The way it shakes out is that there's no widely accessible way of escaping actual, ongoing work, which is what unmotivated people actually hear behind the words "passive income." Whatever the industry/vertical/field, a tiny number will hit it so big that they can actually stop working. Everyone else can bolster their income with passive sources, but that passive income ultimately depends on continuing new stimulus into the market (new products/services, more work marketing) to keep the "passive" flow stable. If you look at the world of indie tabletop RPGs, for example: Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Press makes a very good living and a significant percentage of it is "passive" sales of his back catalog. But if he stopped publishing and promoting new game projects, sales of that back catalog would very likely shrivel to nothing within a calendar year. The open-secret ingredient is always more work. It's why someone like Crawford can afford to tell everyone exactly how he does what he does... Giving away extensive production files that show you his whole creative process, soup to nuts: 99% of people aren't going to put in the work necessary to sustain the passive portion of an individual income.

toast0 6mo ago
> The way it shakes out is that there's no widely accessible way of escaping actual, ongoing work, which is what unmotivated people actually hear behind the words "passive income." 25x expenses in s&p 500 works ok. (Adjust the multiplier for your level of pessimism) Funding it isn't easy, but save a good amount of your income for a few decades and control your expenses and you can get there.
- sfRattan 6mo ago
  I generally agree, but that basically sounds like prudent investing for eventual retirement. Yes, tune the degree of aggression both in terms of work input and spending restraint, but the "work input" has to be high (and effective) for those few decades. EDIT: I'm also kind of writing in the context of having your own little economic engine that you own and control, and can be continually running, rather than owning a tiny piece of the abstracted aggregation of an entire economy's engines. That said, dead-simple, low-fee, market-indexed funds are a generally good place to put the surplus fruits of your own little economic engine.
  - margalabargala 6mo ago
    The difference is, in retirement, you're maintaining an awareness of your own end of life and it's okay if your net worth goes down YoY as long as it doesn't do so too fast. Not so if you're doing the same thing at 38.
- Raidion 6mo ago
  Creating an additional 30%-50% on top of whatever a normal person would consider passive income in order to actually have passive income is NOT a realistic option for a huge % of the population.
  - icedchai 6mo ago
    The key is living below your means by ~30%. You make 150k? Live like you make 100k. Every time you get a raise, 30% goes towards investing. For most engineers this is achievable.
  - bawolff 6mo ago
    Everyone getting income passively is not going to work for society in general. Work still needs to happen. Until we live in a post-scarsity society, if nobody works then everything collapses. That's not to say that passive income is impossible, its just not going to work if large swaths of the population are doing it.
icedchai 6mo ago
The way to escape is through consistent, long term investing in the stock market. You get a regular job and live below your means, investing the difference. Buy and hold. Invest regularly. Not day trading, long term. The problem is most people don’t have the patience, the right temperament, to do this.
- hackable_sand 6mo ago
  Lol what
- phil21 6mo ago
  This is not what people mean by passive income. Yeah, if you have a few million dollars of capital already you can easily just toss it in the market and collect 4% every year indefinitely. Pretty much one of the only truly passive income streams there is. The problem is how long and what you have to do to get that 3-5 million number. No one who is drawn to the “passive income” hustle is thinking “work a normal job for 30 years, live under my means, and invest everything I can”. They want to get much more immediate results so they can enjoy life on easy street because grinding it out for so long sounds extremely depressing. What you describe is a retirement plan, not a passive income lifestyle. Kinda the opposite of escaping.
  - chii 6mo ago
    one word from the parent post sums up everything you said: patience. Or lack thereof (two words).
    - phil21 6mo ago
      Not just one word though. Also hard work and grit. Telling someone interested in escaping the rat race (who is not in the top 10% of income earners) to just stick with a job they despise for 15-25 years is just not going to hit home. They know they can grind out a miserable life. That's the status quo they currently live. Sure there are the scammer/grifter types who just want a super easy mode get rich quick scheme, but a lot of these folks are somewhere in the middle which is where they get taken by the actual scammers. They get told if they just hustle harder than everyone else for a few years they can achieve escape velocity.
Animats 6mo ago
> The way it shakes out is that there's no widely accessible way of escaping actual, ongoing work. Real estate. Historically, that's the way to escape work. It helps to inherit it.

toast0 6mo ago

> The way it shakes out is that there's no widely accessible way of escaping actual, ongoing work, which is what unmotivated people actually hear behind the words "passive income." 25x expenses in s&p 500 works ok. (Adjust the multiplier for your level of pessimism) Funding it isn't easy, but save a good amount of your income for a few decades and control your expenses and you can get there.

sfRattan 6mo ago
I generally agree, but that basically sounds like prudent investing for eventual retirement. Yes, tune the degree of aggression both in terms of work input and spending restraint, but the "work input" has to be high (and effective) for those few decades. EDIT: I'm also kind of writing in the context of having your own little economic engine that you own and control, and can be continually running, rather than owning a tiny piece of the abstracted aggregation of an entire economy's engines. That said, dead-simple, low-fee, market-indexed funds are a generally good place to put the surplus fruits of your own little economic engine.
- margalabargala 6mo ago
  The difference is, in retirement, you're maintaining an awareness of your own end of life and it's okay if your net worth goes down YoY as long as it doesn't do so too fast. Not so if you're doing the same thing at 38.
Raidion 6mo ago
Creating an additional 30%-50% on top of whatever a normal person would consider passive income in order to actually have passive income is NOT a realistic option for a huge % of the population.
- icedchai 6mo ago
  The key is living below your means by ~30%. You make 150k? Live like you make 100k. Every time you get a raise, 30% goes towards investing. For most engineers this is achievable.
- bawolff 6mo ago
  Everyone getting income passively is not going to work for society in general. Work still needs to happen. Until we live in a post-scarsity society, if nobody works then everything collapses. That's not to say that passive income is impossible, its just not going to work if large swaths of the population are doing it.

icedchai 6mo ago

The way to escape is through consistent, long term investing in the stock market. You get a regular job and live below your means, investing the difference. Buy and hold. Invest regularly. Not day trading, long term. The problem is most people don’t have the patience, the right temperament, to do this.

hackable_sand 6mo ago
Lol what
phil21 6mo ago
This is not what people mean by passive income. Yeah, if you have a few million dollars of capital already you can easily just toss it in the market and collect 4% every year indefinitely. Pretty much one of the only truly passive income streams there is. The problem is how long and what you have to do to get that 3-5 million number. No one who is drawn to the “passive income” hustle is thinking “work a normal job for 30 years, live under my means, and invest everything I can”. They want to get much more immediate results so they can enjoy life on easy street because grinding it out for so long sounds extremely depressing. What you describe is a retirement plan, not a passive income lifestyle. Kinda the opposite of escaping.
- chii 6mo ago
  one word from the parent post sums up everything you said: patience. Or lack thereof (two words).
  - phil21 6mo ago
    Not just one word though. Also hard work and grit. Telling someone interested in escaping the rat race (who is not in the top 10% of income earners) to just stick with a job they despise for 15-25 years is just not going to hit home. They know they can grind out a miserable life. That's the status quo they currently live. Sure there are the scammer/grifter types who just want a super easy mode get rich quick scheme, but a lot of these folks are somewhere in the middle which is where they get taken by the actual scammers. They get told if they just hustle harder than everyone else for a few years they can achieve escape velocity.

Animats 6mo ago

> The way it shakes out is that there's no widely accessible way of escaping actual, ongoing work. Real estate. Historically, that's the way to escape work. It helps to inherit it.