Is it OK to Want to Make Money? | Hacker News Reader

Is it OK to Want to Make Money?

swombat.com

22 pointsbensummers27 comments

"Wanting to make money" = "wanting to thrive".

Of course you do. Anyone who doesn't is a fool. It's not only 'okay' to want to make money, it's the only sane way to be.

Don't get me wrong. I've always said 'I don't work for money. I love doing my job.' but if they didn't pay me, I'd go elsewhere and do my job. Money is a vital component of living today and it's very hard to move forward (as a person or business) without it.

An excellent book on this topic is Thou Shall Prosper by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. He examines why the Jewish culture is disproportionately wealthy and much of the reason lies in their positive attitude about business.

Of course you should want to make money. But money should always be the means to the end, never the end. As soon as money becomes the end to someone, that person has lost sight of what's really important in the world.

From that point on that person isn't living life any more, they're just playing WOW with better graphics. "Must farm more gold..."

Western capitalist society was built on the very idea that it is OK to want to make money and to innovate (it was a new idea at the time). To think otherwise places you either back before 1800 or in Sweden.

If you would like to learn more I recommend the book "Bourgeois Dignity: A Revolution in Rhetoric" by Deirdre McCloskey.

"or in Sweden"

Really? Volvo, Ericsson, Saab, Husqvarna, IKEA, Skype, MySQL, just to name a few. It would have been hard to pick a worse example country to make your point.

Believing in a robust social safety net is orthogonal to wanting to make money and innovate.

I want people on my team that want to make money, who know how to make money and won't get to a certain point and say, "well we made 100m let's all go sit on the beach!".

Money should not be the ultimate objective

Why not?

Well, if you're poor enough that having that money means an important change in your lifestyle, then sure: In the short term, making money is a sound goal.

But once you've got money — not even "fuck you" money, necessarily, maybe just enough to go day to day without money being a central worry – then suddenly money becomes a really shallow final goal. What are you going to do with it that you can't possibly do with the money you've got? What is that money really doing for you? Why bother hoarding when what you have is enough?

Especially if you're an entrepreneur, used to turning your ideas into profit. A desire for more money can ruin a sound, integral idea. Some businesses kill themselves because even though they've got money they need more. Others don't necessarily die, but they're given a chance to do really cool things and pass up on them because they'd rather stack onto the money machine.

Out of all the things in the world I could be reaching for, I can't imagine many things more boring and unnecessary to reach for than money.

Well, I doubt anyone whose motive is money is passionate about green ink on paper. So, it's redundant to say money should not be the ultimate motive.

The point is that more money brings more opportunities. You know like starting your own space exploration companies. Worked out well for Bezos, Branson and Musk. You don't make so much money without it being a motive.

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” - Oscar Wilde

I agree that money brings opportunities, but then the opportunities are the interesting thing, not the money. So, if your ambition is to start some fabulously expensive ventures, then you will no doubt need to pursue money with the greatest energy... but even so, the money is only there to serve your ambition.

To quote a story from my father's Nasrudin story site:

How much

In overseeing your possessions it helps to have a long term view. Not too long though. This reminds me of a story:

Every child can imagine the cavern of Ali Baba. But who on earth could have been able to picture the treasuries of Tamerlane? What is robbing a caravan compared with plundering twenty-seven kingdoms? For instance, eight hundred camels were insufficient to carry the gold pillaged only from Damascus. Nobody ever counted the wealth ravished from India… Rivers of gold and silver poured over the gravel of diamond and pearls at the feet of the Master. It was said that the loot gathered by Genghis Khan’s hordes ended up in Timur’s hands too. In Samarkand, like all over the empire, endless numbers of palaces, gardens and treasury chambers belonged all to one man – the Emir. Everything belonged to him.

Then, one cold winter day, on his way to conquering China, the old tyrant drunk too much arak and died. Unexpectedly, for the Iron Emir seemed immortal. After this event, Nasreddin hastened back to Horto, his childhood village. Even there, the death of the emperor was on people’s lips. Everybody wondered what wealth was bequeathed to his heirs by the great Tamerlane, richest man on earth.

“Hodja,” asked Camal the barber,” you lived at Tamerlane’s court, spent your day in his presence and luxury, saw his possessions. You must know. How much did he leave?”

Nasreddin, closed his eyes in concentration and counted for a while in his mind. At last he opened his eyes and said:

“Everything!”

see http://tenner.thinkhost.com/stories/index.php

the money is only there to serve your ambition.

unless you are Felix Dennis - http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich

That's a nice fable. But it also reminded me another thing we could use a lot of money for is to make such fables meaningless.

Like by funding cryonics and friendly AI research - http://lesswrong.com/tag/cryonics/

http://singinst.org/

If you want to live forever you will certainly need to solve the problems which normally come with aging. You will also need to deal with the problem of the sun burning out in X billion years and the heat death of the universe.

I hope you have a lot of money.

Like they love saying around here about scaling, that will be a nice problem to have.

Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy options.

Because money is only useful because of what it can afford you. Why do you want to make money? The answer to that is the true objective.

Well maybe I'm like Felix Dennis, and I want to earn money just for the heck of earning money. Choose your own motives, but don't tell me what should or should not be my motive.

Then the reason you want to make money is that it is your way of keeping score in life. The money itself is obviously not desirable.

Haha there seems to be a lot of semantic merry-go-round on HN lately.

The reason you want oxygen is that it is a way of staying alive. The oxygen itself is obviously not desirable.

The reason you want oxygen is that it is a way of staying alive. The oxygen itself is obviously not desirable.

This is actually my point.

You have to also consider all the other things that happen when you 'make money,' even if you don't spend it on anything personally.

GP was responding to:

I want to earn money just for the heck of earning money

So we're operating under the premise that he's not in it for that stuff.

If MakeMoney() was a higher order function, I'm talking about the combination of lower functions that it involves, as opposed to whatever activity MakeMoney itself could be nested within.

He already established that he only cares about the MakeMoney interface, the details of the implementation are unimportant.

money is a tool. once you have it, great. what are you going to do with it? why are you obtaining it?

Others are responding to your question, but I think the question itself is important, because it points out that there is zero argument in this post; the author is just spouting an opinion. Whether or not you think it is "OK" to want to make money, that's not the way to express your opinion to reasonable people.

Um... Duh. Seriously. I want to make money, I want to make enough money to stop thinking about wanting to make money.

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