7 ms·

This article really felt like a misdiagnosis to me. Sure, a lot of these people were just buying hype from these "get rich from drop shipping!" influencers, ju

This article really felt like a misdiagnosis to me. Sure, a lot of these people were just buying hype from these "get rich from drop shipping!" influencers, just like a million other suckers who got dollar signs in their eyes with real estate schemes, pyramid sale schemes, yada yada, a tale as old as time. I don't think this "passive income" trap is really anything new, and I don't think it was some unique thing that "ate a generation of entrepreneurs", as if that trap didn't exist then instead we'd see all these successful people. Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Just look at all the posts on HN asking about how much people make on their side gigs. You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month. There are notable exceptions, but unfortunately a lot of those notable exceptions are scammy, spammy business models. It's just simply much harder as a small/smaller business to make money and compete with the big boys. Wealth inequality doesn't just apply to people, but also companies. For example, in the past many entrepreneurial types may have started retail stores, while now it's incredibly difficult to compete with the likes of Amazon et al. I read an article recently that the number of public companies has halved compared to a few decades ago. The Wilshire 5000 stock index, for example, actually only includes about 3400-3700 companies now.

Loughla 6mo ago
We started a trophy and award business because my spouse was already making shirts and stuff so we had most of the equipment. The overhead is really low thanks to quick shipping from a large employee owned national supplier (seriously, JDS industries is fucking awesome). It's enough to pay for itself easily and pay for a vacation or two a year, for about 4 hours of work a week. If we really put effort in, it could replace our day jobs. Where most people go wrong is their expectation. We expected this to fund a vacation and maybe car payments. That it's doing that is exactly right and we don't want to take it any further. If people had that view, instead of feeling like they have to make a billion dollars, I think side gigs would be a different beast entirely.
- saulpw 6mo ago
  There are many levels between "pays for a vacation or two a year" and "billion dollars". I think most people just want to make a comfortable living (which includes eventual retirement) and not have to work themselves to the bone.
  - Loughla 6mo ago
    You can see it in the comments though. Many many many people who fall for get rich quick schemes, whether it's an app or saas or drop shipping or whatever genuinely want that billion dollars. You can be comfortable on not very much money with realistic expectations while not working yourself to the bone was kind of my point.
  - jandrese 6mo ago
    I think the bar has risen for what a comfortable life requires now. Housing costs have outpaced inflation for a couple of decades now. Health insurance has rocketed into the stratosphere, especially in states that dropped the Obamacare subsidies. Even staples like food and fuel are hard to keep up with. Lord help you if you have children and are trying to save for college. Projected costs for universities are getting to "buy a brand new luxury car every year" levels. Not to mention all of the school costs on top of that. It adds up so fast.
    - bilegeek 6mo ago
      I appreciate you setting the bar on necessities. Too many people focus on the... "cheap" "luxuries" like air conditioning, smartphones, internet access.
    - bawolff 6mo ago
      > Housing costs have outpaced inflation In fairness though, given inflation is the average, housing costs outpacing means something else underpaced.
      - selcuka 6mo ago
nitwit005 6mo ago
The article's example is a person can't even be bothered to understand what the product he's selling is for, and doesn't appear to fully grasp they're losing money. Even in much better circumstances, success would presumably remain elusive. Some people just lack the capacity for this sort of thing, and unfortunately fraudsters target them by trying to convince them otherwise.
bawolff 6mo ago
I don't think there was ever a time where a solo-entrepenur could make real money without putting in lots of effort and taking lots of risks. We remember the success stories, we don't remember the bankruptcies.
- badestrand 6mo ago
  There was always lots of "normal" entrepreneurship, where people opened a small shop and sold something. You didn't need to do a 0.1% job to succeed, success was mostly normal-distributed. Internet businesses by contrast have a power law distribution. Meaning if you perform average you will end up with just $100 per month. The potential upside is infitite though. The outcome of the average business person is very different between physical and online business.
happybuy 6mo ago
> Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Hard disagree. As the article notes, I think if you concentrate on a real business, not a scam-y 'get rich quick scheme' business then, especially with the internet, its never been easier to run a solo business at scale. For myself, I wrote an app as a side hobby, which then took off, so I started working on it part-time, then moved to full-time when the revenue justified. It's now growing to where it exceeds what I would have made working for someone else. Note this took 7+ years of constant work, improvements and care. It's the type of dedication that makes you competitive with even larger organisations. And the time required to be a 'success' ensures that you won't have any competitors who just want to make a quick buck or get to "passive income" within a year or two.
- nightski 6mo ago
  A real business is simply one that makes money. Not some gatekeeping criteria presented by the ridiculous OP. Just because you took 7+ years to develop a business does not mean that all businesses require that or that it is the only way.
  - jimbokun 6mo ago
    You keep telling yourself that.
    - khriss 6mo ago
      Why the hate? If you believe GP is wrong, then why not outline where you think they are wrong? HN is one of the few places left where low effort snark is thankfully below the noise floor, please don't destroy that.
- Serhii-Set 6mo ago
  [dead]
Marsymars 6mo ago
> Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Part of that was accurately diagnosed by the article in the bit about the dog walking business vs dog walking platform. My partner bootstrapped a successful full-time cleaning business that she ran for a few years and the limiting factor was basically her ability to hire and retain good employees. A physical cleaning business has no path to scale like a tech company though.
mtlynch 6mo ago
>You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month. There are notable exceptions, but unfortunately a lot of those notable exceptions are scammy, spammy business models. I suspect this is largely sampling bias. I host meetups for indie founders, and several attendees earn their living through solo businesses. When I go to conferences like Microconf, I meet lots more. The problem with measuring financial success by who posts about it on HN is: * The more someone is making at their solo business, the less they want to blab about it and attract competitors. * The people earning at the low end are more desperate for people to see what they're doing so they can pick up new customers, so they're more likely to talk about their work. * The more successful founders are busier and spend less time posting on HN.
- brunoborges 6mo ago
  > The more someone is making at their solo business, the less they want to blab about it and attract competitors. Exactly! And this is why every time I see someone selling a course while bragging about making a lot of money, I know for sure they are _not_ making money.
  - nemomarx 6mo ago
    Well you never know, maybe selling the course is the profitable part?
    - Ekaros 6mo ago
      I have always felt that online courses selling on how to sell online courses are underserved market... You do not hear too much about those, not that I have looked.
      - bombcar 6mo ago
        They do exist if you dig - for example: https://johntreed.com/products/how-to-write-publish-and-sell-your-own-how-to-book https://johntreed.com/products/how-to-write-publish-and-sell...
hunter-gatherer 6mo ago
Didn't feel like a misdiagnosis to me. My spouse around 2017 was one of those that got sucked into a course to earn income with an Amazon store. As I read the article basically every point resonated with my experience. The dog walking business example was also appropriate in my mind. My spouse fortunately broke even, minus time, on her attempt with drop shipping garbage nobody really needs. Now she makes decent money with her oil paintings. Not "passive income" but real money and profit. Not enough to retire (that's what I am for!) but actual money nonetheless.
- nyantaro1 6mo ago
  Would you mind sharing a little about how your wife does business? Like, are her clients regular people or art shops? How does she put a price on her work?
  - hunter-gatherer 6mo ago
    I'm the least interested person in art you'll ever know, so how she prices her work I'm not sure. I know she doesn't go by time spent on a piece, but instead how good it turns out. I think she just casually looks at other art for sale that is around the same quality and prices accordingly. After so many rounds of that I think you just get a good intuition for it. She also has a few art shows she applies to and goes presents at those. I think this is where most of her recurring customers come from honestly, and not Instagram. Though she has had a few commissions from Instagram. A side note on those looking to buy art, you might refrain from asking for a custom piece. If you see something you like, there's a good chance you don't know why you like it even if you think you do. So when you give the artist a picture you want them to translate into something like oil, it'll probably disappoint. The frustrations I've seen my wife go through trying to get a commission right is tiring.
- hn_throwaway_99 6mo ago
  I'm not in any way doubting that lots of people were swept up in Amazon drop shipping scams. My argument is that this was not some sort of unique "passive income trap that ate a generation of entrepreneurs". Years before your spouse enrolled in that Amazon course, people were spending tens of thousands of dollars on Trump University. Many years before that I had a friend that got sucked into the Equinox International MLM scam. Point being those types of promises of easy money after paying for a course, or outright scams, are not something new or unique.
zaptheimpaler 6mo ago
Yeah, it feels like the author is blaming his personal bugbear but entrepreneurship and independent businesses are facing systemic issues of massive concentration of market power and zero antritrust enforcement.
VirusNewbie 6mo ago
Is it possible this has things backwards? When I was in high school 25 years ago, unless you got lucky with an IPO, tech didn't pay all that well. (I worked in software while I was in high school, so I know some of this first hand). It was office space. It didn't matter how smart you were, if you didn't go into management, or join Apple/Microsoft at just the right time, you weren't going to live a rich lifestyle. Not only that, you'd probably be reporting to some MBA type biz guy who has no idea how software works, you'd not be well respected, and your perks were drip coffee and occasional donuts on friday. Of course brilliant, hard working, talented engineers said "fuck that" and go build something awesome themselves. Things have changed drastically. Now, brilliant hard working people can literally make millions at dozens of companies . You will report to another engineer who has slightly optimized for soft skills, you get lavish perks (except amazon, but at least you get paid well there), and real equity. There's a whole spectrum of options for ambitious software folk that didn't texist ~25 years ago.
- hn_throwaway_99 6mo ago
  I was a software engineer 25 years ago, and tech paid very well - and in a non-Bay area location, and I'm only counting my cash comp as my stock options ended up being worthless (dot com bust and all). I made more my second year out of college than a family member's first year as a physician post-residency.
  - VirusNewbie 6mo ago
    Can you tell me more? 25 years ago I was only a high school getting paid minimum wage 'cosplaying' as an office worker writing SQL and VBScript. So, my view is skewed, but I got the impression software engineering was not a place people were retiring 'early' from, unless you made it in management. It seemed like a pretty standard office job, maybe with a little more perks due to the eccentric nature of the majority of workers. Do I have the wrong impression?
atomicfiredoll 6mo ago
My current read of the situation is similar. If you go to other countries, there are slews of small shops, even in run down areas. On top of that, in places within Asia, the malls are also open and full of regional chains. It also feels like there's such a wider variety of certain goods available, because the little bakeries are doing their own thing, while in the U.S. seemingly everybody is eating Costco danishes. "Passive income brain" people are not the only one's trying to "build revenue engines," that same sort of talk exists in corporate America. There are already people that that own companies which are there "to generate passive income for me," right now--there's a whole class of millionaires and billionaires that don't have to work. Passive income people didn't ruin the "content quality of the entire internet" and are far from the only ones doing so. Many of these folks are likely the ones that would have owned a hardware store if America didn't ignore it's regulatory duties while preaching about how "important" small business is. In the U.S. situation really seems to have fossilized into a few big players/platforms, and they continue to freeze up through the process of things like private equity roll-ups. There's a thread on the front page right now about Amazon's alleged price-fixing tactics, which hurt customers and small businesses. Further: Real-estate is an investment, so for most being able to pay commercial rents is a pipe dream. Healthcare is tied to employment, so people are less free to try and start something other than "on the side." American's choose "convenience" when shopping and to put people in power that serve these large companies or their owners, not small businesses or communities. Dropshipping, creating a "sweaty startup," etc... it's all just people trying to make do within the system they're trapped in.
- lotsofpulp 6mo ago
  >Healthcare is tied to employment, so people are less free to try and start something other than "on the side." It has long been easy for anyone to buy health insurance without an employer in the US. If you are self employed, you can even pay for it with pre tax income. The problem is it costs $500 to $2,500 per month per person plus $10,000 out of pocket maximum per year, which means you need a high income to be able to afford it.
  - atomicfiredoll 6mo ago
pharrington 6mo ago
You're conflating "passive income" with "real money". Competing with the big businesses is completely off topic.
bryanrasmussen 6mo ago
>what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Just look at all the posts on HN asking about how much people make on their side gigs. is someone making money on a side gig really a solopreneur? By definition a side gig is not something you expect to make significant amounts of money on. if a side gig starts generating significant amounts of money then you would probably make it your primary gig.
phyzix5761 6mo ago
Please keep up this mentality because it means less competition for the rest of us.
trick-or-treat 6mo ago
> You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month From my perspective, you have to take a lot of shots, I did around 20 side hustle ideas last year and 2 are making over $100/mo. The other 18 I dropped. The only note I will give is that the 2 that succeeded really played to my strengths. About me: I once had a hustle that did around $6k/month but that was many years ago and I decided I would be happier as a hired gun coder. The rise of AI made me rethink this so I'm clawing my back to providing services.
Animats 6mo ago
> The Wilshire 5000 stock index, for example, actually only includes about 3400-3700 companies now. That amazed me when I heard it recently. The number of tradeable things continues to increase, but most of them are two or three steps removed from real-world production.
rozumem 6mo ago
> It's just simply much harder as a small/smaller business to make money and compete with the big boys. You're conflating two different things. Thanks to software, it's easier today than it's ever been to make money as a small business / solopreneur. It's also harder to compete with the big boys, possibly for the same reason and due to economies of scale. That's why I don't bother entering the same markets the big boys are in. There are plenty of niche markets which they don't bother touching where a small business can thrive.
dailymorn 6mo ago
Yes, passive income businesses didn't fail because operators stopped caring. They failed because the markets were structurally broken. Dropshipping, affiliate SEO, print-on-demand... these face the same margin compression regardless of how engaged you are. Ad cost inflation, platform saturation, algorithmic displacement, etc... it doesn't matter whether the operator is engaged or not. Caring's a moat only where differentiation is possible. In commoditized markets, it doesn't move the needle.
- dailymorn 6mo ago
  [dead]
paulddraper 6mo ago
The Census Bureau reports 10% of the workforce being self-employed for their main occupation. That's virtually the same as it was 20 years ago. > I read an article recently that the number of public companies has halved compared to a few decades ago. That's not because there are fewer companies but rather because private markets have much more capital. OpenAI is the extreme example. If it were public, it would be the ~tenth most valuable public company in the world.
lowbloodsugar 6mo ago
The US economy is in a death spiral. It’s where the UK was after WW2: lost an empire, didn’t want to admit it or address it. The foundational jobs of the economy - blue collar work - are gone. There simply aren’t enough people with jobs at each layer to support the businesses and jobs in the next layer up. The US will discover its total inadequacy if it gets into a war with China. We just can’t build weapons as fast as they can because we can’t build anything any more. Currently they are building solar and EVs while we can’t pave our roads. If they wanted to switch to pumping out destroyers, missiles and drones, we would be out gunned very quickly. These desperate attempts at passive income are simply another symptom of the absence of a functioning economy.
- watt 6mo ago
  > if they wanted to switch to pumping out destroyers, missiles and drones This is such a naive take. Nobody is coming to US to try to outgun you. The moment petrodollar wobbles, the moment US Dollar stops being the world reserve currency, the game will be over for you. You will discover what it really means to be competitive, once the world stops giving you goods essentially in exchange for glass beads.
  - lowbloodsugar 6mo ago
    Sure. If US leaders had sense, they wouldn’t engage adversaries they can’t beat. I’m not saying China will start this war. I’m saying China doesn’t need to. China can just watch it happen. Like the US watched the British in Suez. But the US might start something and that’s how they’ll discover they are the just the last of the failed empires. Pretty sure the current administrations end game here is copying North Korea. The rich have enough oil in Texas to perpetuate their lifestyle, while violently suppressing all opposition.
lazide 6mo ago
Anyone making real money on their ‘side gigs’ is very unlikely to be on that thread, let along telling anyone in detail what they are doing. It invites unwelcome competition.

Loughla 6mo ago

We started a trophy and award business because my spouse was already making shirts and stuff so we had most of the equipment. The overhead is really low thanks to quick shipping from a large employee owned national supplier (seriously, JDS industries is fucking awesome). It's enough to pay for itself easily and pay for a vacation or two a year, for about 4 hours of work a week. If we really put effort in, it could replace our day jobs. Where most people go wrong is their expectation. We expected this to fund a vacation and maybe car payments. That it's doing that is exactly right and we don't want to take it any further. If people had that view, instead of feeling like they have to make a billion dollars, I think side gigs would be a different beast entirely.

saulpw 6mo ago
There are many levels between "pays for a vacation or two a year" and "billion dollars". I think most people just want to make a comfortable living (which includes eventual retirement) and not have to work themselves to the bone.
- Loughla 6mo ago
  You can see it in the comments though. Many many many people who fall for get rich quick schemes, whether it's an app or saas or drop shipping or whatever genuinely want that billion dollars. You can be comfortable on not very much money with realistic expectations while not working yourself to the bone was kind of my point.
- jandrese 6mo ago
  I think the bar has risen for what a comfortable life requires now. Housing costs have outpaced inflation for a couple of decades now. Health insurance has rocketed into the stratosphere, especially in states that dropped the Obamacare subsidies. Even staples like food and fuel are hard to keep up with. Lord help you if you have children and are trying to save for college. Projected costs for universities are getting to "buy a brand new luxury car every year" levels. Not to mention all of the school costs on top of that. It adds up so fast.
  - bilegeek 6mo ago
    I appreciate you setting the bar on necessities. Too many people focus on the... "cheap" "luxuries" like air conditioning, smartphones, internet access.
  - bawolff 6mo ago
    > Housing costs have outpaced inflation In fairness though, given inflation is the average, housing costs outpacing means something else underpaced.
    - selcuka 6mo ago

nitwit005 6mo ago

The article's example is a person can't even be bothered to understand what the product he's selling is for, and doesn't appear to fully grasp they're losing money. Even in much better circumstances, success would presumably remain elusive. Some people just lack the capacity for this sort of thing, and unfortunately fraudsters target them by trying to convince them otherwise.

bawolff 6mo ago

I don't think there was ever a time where a solo-entrepenur could make real money without putting in lots of effort and taking lots of risks. We remember the success stories, we don't remember the bankruptcies.

badestrand 6mo ago
There was always lots of "normal" entrepreneurship, where people opened a small shop and sold something. You didn't need to do a 0.1% job to succeed, success was mostly normal-distributed. Internet businesses by contrast have a power law distribution. Meaning if you perform average you will end up with just $100 per month. The potential upside is infitite though. The outcome of the average business person is very different between physical and online business.

happybuy 6mo ago

> Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Hard disagree. As the article notes, I think if you concentrate on a real business, not a scam-y 'get rich quick scheme' business then, especially with the internet, its never been easier to run a solo business at scale. For myself, I wrote an app as a side hobby, which then took off, so I started working on it part-time, then moved to full-time when the revenue justified. It's now growing to where it exceeds what I would have made working for someone else. Note this took 7+ years of constant work, improvements and care. It's the type of dedication that makes you competitive with even larger organisations. And the time required to be a 'success' ensures that you won't have any competitors who just want to make a quick buck or get to "passive income" within a year or two.

nightski 6mo ago
A real business is simply one that makes money. Not some gatekeeping criteria presented by the ridiculous OP. Just because you took 7+ years to develop a business does not mean that all businesses require that or that it is the only way.
- jimbokun 6mo ago
  You keep telling yourself that.
  - khriss 6mo ago
    Why the hate? If you believe GP is wrong, then why not outline where you think they are wrong? HN is one of the few places left where low effort snark is thankfully below the noise floor, please don't destroy that.
Serhii-Set 6mo ago
[dead]

Marsymars 6mo ago

> Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Part of that was accurately diagnosed by the article in the bit about the dog walking business vs dog walking platform. My partner bootstrapped a successful full-time cleaning business that she ran for a few years and the limiting factor was basically her ability to hire and retain good employees. A physical cleaning business has no path to scale like a tech company though.

mtlynch 6mo ago

>You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month. There are notable exceptions, but unfortunately a lot of those notable exceptions are scammy, spammy business models. I suspect this is largely sampling bias. I host meetups for indie founders, and several attendees earn their living through solo businesses. When I go to conferences like Microconf, I meet lots more. The problem with measuring financial success by who posts about it on HN is: * The more someone is making at their solo business, the less they want to blab about it and attract competitors. * The people earning at the low end are more desperate for people to see what they're doing so they can pick up new customers, so they're more likely to talk about their work. * The more successful founders are busier and spend less time posting on HN.

brunoborges 6mo ago
> The more someone is making at their solo business, the less they want to blab about it and attract competitors. Exactly! And this is why every time I see someone selling a course while bragging about making a lot of money, I know for sure they are _not_ making money.
- nemomarx 6mo ago
  Well you never know, maybe selling the course is the profitable part?
  - Ekaros 6mo ago
    I have always felt that online courses selling on how to sell online courses are underserved market... You do not hear too much about those, not that I have looked.
    - bombcar 6mo ago
      They do exist if you dig - for example: https://johntreed.com/products/how-to-write-publish-and-sell-your-own-how-to-book https://johntreed.com/products/how-to-write-publish-and-sell...

hunter-gatherer 6mo ago

Didn't feel like a misdiagnosis to me. My spouse around 2017 was one of those that got sucked into a course to earn income with an Amazon store. As I read the article basically every point resonated with my experience. The dog walking business example was also appropriate in my mind. My spouse fortunately broke even, minus time, on her attempt with drop shipping garbage nobody really needs. Now she makes decent money with her oil paintings. Not "passive income" but real money and profit. Not enough to retire (that's what I am for!) but actual money nonetheless.

nyantaro1 6mo ago
Would you mind sharing a little about how your wife does business? Like, are her clients regular people or art shops? How does she put a price on her work?
- hunter-gatherer 6mo ago
  I'm the least interested person in art you'll ever know, so how she prices her work I'm not sure. I know she doesn't go by time spent on a piece, but instead how good it turns out. I think she just casually looks at other art for sale that is around the same quality and prices accordingly. After so many rounds of that I think you just get a good intuition for it. She also has a few art shows she applies to and goes presents at those. I think this is where most of her recurring customers come from honestly, and not Instagram. Though she has had a few commissions from Instagram. A side note on those looking to buy art, you might refrain from asking for a custom piece. If you see something you like, there's a good chance you don't know why you like it even if you think you do. So when you give the artist a picture you want them to translate into something like oil, it'll probably disappoint. The frustrations I've seen my wife go through trying to get a commission right is tiring.
hn_throwaway_99 6mo ago
I'm not in any way doubting that lots of people were swept up in Amazon drop shipping scams. My argument is that this was not some sort of unique "passive income trap that ate a generation of entrepreneurs". Years before your spouse enrolled in that Amazon course, people were spending tens of thousands of dollars on Trump University. Many years before that I had a friend that got sucked into the Equinox International MLM scam. Point being those types of promises of easy money after paying for a course, or outright scams, are not something new or unique.

zaptheimpaler 6mo ago

Yeah, it feels like the author is blaming his personal bugbear but entrepreneurship and independent businesses are facing systemic issues of massive concentration of market power and zero antritrust enforcement.

VirusNewbie 6mo ago

Is it possible this has things backwards? When I was in high school 25 years ago, unless you got lucky with an IPO, tech didn't pay all that well. (I worked in software while I was in high school, so I know some of this first hand). It was office space. It didn't matter how smart you were, if you didn't go into management, or join Apple/Microsoft at just the right time, you weren't going to live a rich lifestyle. Not only that, you'd probably be reporting to some MBA type biz guy who has no idea how software works, you'd not be well respected, and your perks were drip coffee and occasional donuts on friday. Of course brilliant, hard working, talented engineers said "fuck that" and go build something awesome themselves. Things have changed drastically. Now, brilliant hard working people can literally make millions at dozens of companies . You will report to another engineer who has slightly optimized for soft skills, you get lavish perks (except amazon, but at least you get paid well there), and real equity. There's a whole spectrum of options for ambitious software folk that didn't texist ~25 years ago.

hn_throwaway_99 6mo ago
I was a software engineer 25 years ago, and tech paid very well - and in a non-Bay area location, and I'm only counting my cash comp as my stock options ended up being worthless (dot com bust and all). I made more my second year out of college than a family member's first year as a physician post-residency.
- VirusNewbie 6mo ago
  Can you tell me more? 25 years ago I was only a high school getting paid minimum wage 'cosplaying' as an office worker writing SQL and VBScript. So, my view is skewed, but I got the impression software engineering was not a place people were retiring 'early' from, unless you made it in management. It seemed like a pretty standard office job, maybe with a little more perks due to the eccentric nature of the majority of workers. Do I have the wrong impression?

atomicfiredoll 6mo ago

My current read of the situation is similar. If you go to other countries, there are slews of small shops, even in run down areas. On top of that, in places within Asia, the malls are also open and full of regional chains. It also feels like there's such a wider variety of certain goods available, because the little bakeries are doing their own thing, while in the U.S. seemingly everybody is eating Costco danishes. "Passive income brain" people are not the only one's trying to "build revenue engines," that same sort of talk exists in corporate America. There are already people that that own companies which are there "to generate passive income for me," right now--there's a whole class of millionaires and billionaires that don't have to work. Passive income people didn't ruin the "content quality of the entire internet" and are far from the only ones doing so. Many of these folks are likely the ones that would have owned a hardware store if America didn't ignore it's regulatory duties while preaching about how "important" small business is. In the U.S. situation really seems to have fossilized into a few big players/platforms, and they continue to freeze up through the process of things like private equity roll-ups. There's a thread on the front page right now about Amazon's alleged price-fixing tactics, which hurt customers and small businesses. Further: Real-estate is an investment, so for most being able to pay commercial rents is a pipe dream. Healthcare is tied to employment, so people are less free to try and start something other than "on the side." American's choose "convenience" when shopping and to put people in power that serve these large companies or their owners, not small businesses or communities. Dropshipping, creating a "sweaty startup," etc... it's all just people trying to make do within the system they're trapped in.

lotsofpulp 6mo ago
>Healthcare is tied to employment, so people are less free to try and start something other than "on the side." It has long been easy for anyone to buy health insurance without an employer in the US. If you are self employed, you can even pay for it with pre tax income. The problem is it costs $500 to $2,500 per month per person plus $10,000 out of pocket maximum per year, which means you need a high income to be able to afford it.
- atomicfiredoll 6mo ago

pharrington 6mo ago

You're conflating "passive income" with "real money". Competing with the big businesses is completely off topic.

bryanrasmussen 6mo ago

>what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Just look at all the posts on HN asking about how much people make on their side gigs. is someone making money on a side gig really a solopreneur? By definition a side gig is not something you expect to make significant amounts of money on. if a side gig starts generating significant amounts of money then you would probably make it your primary gig.

phyzix5761 6mo ago

Please keep up this mentality because it means less competition for the rest of us.

trick-or-treat 6mo ago

> You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month From my perspective, you have to take a lot of shots, I did around 20 side hustle ideas last year and 2 are making over $100/mo. The other 18 I dropped. The only note I will give is that the 2 that succeeded really played to my strengths. About me: I once had a hustle that did around $6k/month but that was many years ago and I decided I would be happier as a hired gun coder. The rise of AI made me rethink this so I'm clawing my back to providing services.

Animats 6mo ago

> The Wilshire 5000 stock index, for example, actually only includes about 3400-3700 companies now. That amazed me when I heard it recently. The number of tradeable things continues to increase, but most of them are two or three steps removed from real-world production.

rozumem 6mo ago

> It's just simply much harder as a small/smaller business to make money and compete with the big boys. You're conflating two different things. Thanks to software, it's easier today than it's ever been to make money as a small business / solopreneur. It's also harder to compete with the big boys, possibly for the same reason and due to economies of scale. That's why I don't bother entering the same markets the big boys are in. There are plenty of niche markets which they don't bother touching where a small business can thrive.

dailymorn 6mo ago

Yes, passive income businesses didn't fail because operators stopped caring. They failed because the markets were structurally broken. Dropshipping, affiliate SEO, print-on-demand... these face the same margin compression regardless of how engaged you are. Ad cost inflation, platform saturation, algorithmic displacement, etc... it doesn't matter whether the operator is engaged or not. Caring's a moat only where differentiation is possible. In commoditized markets, it doesn't move the needle.

dailymorn 6mo ago
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paulddraper 6mo ago

The Census Bureau reports 10% of the workforce being self-employed for their main occupation. That's virtually the same as it was 20 years ago. > I read an article recently that the number of public companies has halved compared to a few decades ago. That's not because there are fewer companies but rather because private markets have much more capital. OpenAI is the extreme example. If it were public, it would be the ~tenth most valuable public company in the world.

lowbloodsugar 6mo ago

The US economy is in a death spiral. It’s where the UK was after WW2: lost an empire, didn’t want to admit it or address it. The foundational jobs of the economy - blue collar work - are gone. There simply aren’t enough people with jobs at each layer to support the businesses and jobs in the next layer up. The US will discover its total inadequacy if it gets into a war with China. We just can’t build weapons as fast as they can because we can’t build anything any more. Currently they are building solar and EVs while we can’t pave our roads. If they wanted to switch to pumping out destroyers, missiles and drones, we would be out gunned very quickly. These desperate attempts at passive income are simply another symptom of the absence of a functioning economy.

watt 6mo ago
> if they wanted to switch to pumping out destroyers, missiles and drones This is such a naive take. Nobody is coming to US to try to outgun you. The moment petrodollar wobbles, the moment US Dollar stops being the world reserve currency, the game will be over for you. You will discover what it really means to be competitive, once the world stops giving you goods essentially in exchange for glass beads.
- lowbloodsugar 6mo ago
  Sure. If US leaders had sense, they wouldn’t engage adversaries they can’t beat. I’m not saying China will start this war. I’m saying China doesn’t need to. China can just watch it happen. Like the US watched the British in Suez. But the US might start something and that’s how they’ll discover they are the just the last of the failed empires. Pretty sure the current administrations end game here is copying North Korea. The rich have enough oil in Texas to perpetuate their lifestyle, while violently suppressing all opposition.

lazide 6mo ago

Anyone making real money on their ‘side gigs’ is very unlikely to be on that thread, let along telling anyone in detail what they are doing. It invites unwelcome competition.