[biglearner1day]

I suppose the question you're asking is why we've socially moved away from doing stuff just for fun in an effort to make a “passive” income and monetize as much of our time as possible.

Personally, I've seen my peers (by both profession and age) stop participate in activities that don't have an immediate reward, the only exception they make is if there's a long term financial reward. Odd.

[rpnx]

"Passive Income" is the root of all of our economic troubles. People who are getting "Passive Income", are by definition not working and producing output for the economy.

In order to gain passive income, you must leech off someone else's work product. So in addition to not working yourself, you reduce the incentive for others to work by taking what could have been their wages.

The obsession with "Passive Income" is what is killing the United States and western economies. Capitalism only works when bad investing is punished and the investors contribute value to society by selecting productive and useful occupations for the labor force. In the current system, investors instead act primarily as leeches/parasites that are killing off the labor force.

There are too many governmental laws "protecting investors" that need to be eliminated, because they allow idiots to remain members of the investor class. If you are too dumb to recognize a ponzi scheme, then you don't need to be controlling society's capital and should be relegated to working class.

The idea of investing in the stock market as a whole and the creation of regulations that have made that viable are killing off the labor force in general.

[nightski]

I'm not convinced. Passive income is a form of arbitrage. It means there is an inefficiency in the market and that person is fulfilling it. It's pretty rare that continues indefinitely without any effort. There may be a lot of people trying for passive income but the ones who actually achieve it are very rare. Even being a landlord can be a lot of work.

Things like fractional reserve banking, the stock market, these are actually all a way to increase liquidity. A forcing function so that people do not sit on cash and instead let it flow back through the economy. Hardly parasitic/leeching, it's actually fueling the engine of our economy.

[badpun]

Broad (stock) index investing is pretty much passive income. So far, the indices (SP500 etc.) have been performing pretty well and the strategy panned out. It may change in the future though.

[Vox_Leone]

>>"Passive Income" is the root of all of our economic troubles. People who are getting "Passive Income", are by definition not working and producing output for the economy.

You bet they are not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking