[bawolff]

> This is not what people mean by passive income.

This is literally the traditional definition of passive income - using your capital to generate more capital.

There is no free lunch, you need to provide something to get $$$. If you are providing labour it is by definition not really passive. That leaves land or capital.

[phil21]

The point is though, that no one pitches it this way. Everyone knows if you have millions of dollars you can generate passive income. That's simply not interesting to anyone.

If you have to grind out making millions over the course of a decade or three, that's simply called having a regular job. That's the status quo.

The passive income folk are all about finding some "hack" where you can be clever or smart or out-hustle the next guy and unlock some secret method to making passive income without capital. That's the entire "industry" in a nutshell. They are not going to folks with $1m in the bank telling them how to make 4% returns on it by tossing it into low cost ETFs. They are going to folks grinding out a living saying they have a shortcut to not needing that capital base to start off with.

tldr; If you already have capital, you don't need to think about passive income. It just happens.

[lazide]

‘everyone knows’ is doing a lot of work here. you still need to spend time, and make a lot of good judgement calls (not easy!) to earn a useful amount of passive income on investments without losing your principal.

being a professional investor (what you’re referring to) is especially terrifying in a low interest rate environment.