<story><title>How to Drop Out</title><url>http://ranprieur.com/essays/dropout.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>moron4hire</author><text>He falls into a number of fundamental paradoxes in his reasoning.&lt;p&gt;He asserts that profit is evil, which is essentially saying that time spent procuring resources is not a cost that can be recuperated through monetary compensation. He almost even comes out and says time isn&apos;t a cost when he says he&apos;d think it evil to sell something he found while dumpster diving, &quot;how can you sell something you get for free?&quot;. He didn&apos;t get it for free, he got it through the time effort of dumpster diving, a recurring cost that has a random (though apparently positive) payoff. Yet his entire motivation for &quot;dropping out&quot; is to use his time as he sees fit, because it is the most precious thing to him.&lt;p&gt;He asserts that trade requires someone to be &quot;the sucker&quot;, yet he justifies his couch surfing by offering his friends services instead of money. Trade fundamentally requires that both parties agree that the trade action is advantageous to both of them; total value increases for both parties, separately and combined.&lt;p&gt;He is absolutely engaged in a purely capitalistic system of free trade, completely unfettered by the dead-weight loss of tax systems, and does nothing but deride the one economic system that dragged the human race out of abject poverty.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to Drop Out</title><url>http://ranprieur.com/essays/dropout.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>notauser</author><text>I rather liked this bit:&lt;p&gt;&quot;If you require a motivational writer or speaker to live differently, then as soon as that external energy shot wears off, you will fizzle and burn out. But if everyone is trying to discourage you from doing something, and you do it anyway, then you have the internal motivation to persist and succeed.&quot;&lt;p&gt;This probably applies to start ups too. Starting up on my own has been 1% partying at cool start up events and 99% quietly getting on with stuff that needs to be done. This is not exactly how it is sold to people - one great idea, 15 minutes of hacking to a suitably cool soundtrack, then off to the nightclub to flagrantly spend the IPO money. Possibly you might have to suffer a back alley chase or two with agents dispatched from the Yamicroogle offices to steal your technology, but that&apos;s about the extent of the sacrifice.&lt;p&gt;The 1% is fun! But if you aren&apos;t the kind of person who also enjoys the other 99% I don&apos;t know how you would cope.</text></comment>