Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jjav 1892 days ago
A phone in your pocket is not wealth, hard to believe this example comes up so often in these discussions.

It's a gadget, a depreciating asset.

Actual wealth produces more wealth, which is why the very rich get richer even while they sleep. A gadget makes its owner a tiny bit poorer every day as it depreciates.
1 comments
cloverich 1892 days ago
The problem with defining wealth in that manner is, you can argue a person has literally every material possession they could ever want, from entertainment to knowledge to health and nutrition, and have no desire or use for further "wealth" and yet sitll be considered poor. Yet, it is easy to imagine several of these depreciating assets being more valuable to a person than any imaginable level of wealth, were they unable to use the wealth to obtain those assets.

> Actual wealth produces more wealth

I used my computer to learn to program getting a higher salary than I"ve ever held previously. It produced quite a bit of wealth for me that would have been unatainable without it. Does that impact your stance in any manner?

link
jjav 1891 days ago
> and yet sitll be considered poor.

Well, "poor", no. But if someone who inherited vast wealth used it all up on depreciating assets (even if it is superyachts instead of phones) then yes, they'll eventually end up with no wealth.

Of course, for sufficiently large amounts of wealth, it is effectively impossible to use it all up so it may take many generations. Jeff Bezos kids will never be able to be poor no matter what.

> Does that impact your stance in any manner?

No. The computer (depreciating asset) didn't produce any wealth. Your hard work and learning, while using it as a tool, is what produced wealth. The computer itself depreciated to zero.

link
cloverich 1891 days ago
> The computer (depreciating asset) didn't produce any wealth. Your hard work and learning,

No amount of hard work and learning would have been sufficient without the computer though? The computer is an absolute requirement to become a programmer. No computer, no wealthy career in programming.

link
jjav 1891 days ago
Amusingly, I learned to program on paper because I couldn't afford a computer. I'd write all these programs during the week on paper and then on weekends go to a friendly Radio Shack to type them in and test them.
link
gmadsen 1891 days ago
it is still not wealth. A certain amount of wealth is even needed to do what you are talking about. You need sufficient housing, food, health, and free time to learn to program. All of which would scale with inflation
link