Arun, I have no idea to what extent you have spent learning, working, scrimping and saving, investing, but I have done more than my share thanks, and to create something like zenbu.net.nz has got nothing whatsoever to do with gambling. It has got a lot to do with risk, knowledge and extended effort.
Since the Tradable Citzenship value of the average Kiwi is about $2 million, I can tell you that the extra effort over and above that to create Zenbu is a LOT more than that. <Thats like the best gambler on the Table. He does do that little bit extra game after game even with bad cards at times. But he makes that pile because the other gamblers come and put their earned resources on the table. Did the gambler create those resources? No. He just played a game that everyone agreed on how winnings were going to be distributed. Did he deserve to win? Yes. >
In the case of Dr Irwin Jacobs, he personally created value thousands of times the Tradable Citizenship value he was handed for no charge as a youngster. Which is not to say he created ALL the added value of Qualcomm, but certainly a significant proportion.
There is a difference between investing and speculating: <Wealth is being lost by many who bet their resources on mis-priced assets such as peak housing a few years ago. Unfortunately due to monetization, everyone is a gambler.> As Warren Buffett has pointed out, a lump of gold will remain a lump of gold a thousand years later. Zero value is created by buying gold. If there are winners and losers in speculative assets such as houses had become, then that's no more surprising than to find that there are winners and losers in games of poker.
It's really quite insulting to say that people who create enormous wealth are just lucky in a big casino. To me it shows a paucity of understanding of what earning wealth and investing are about. If you look at countries which treat wealth as just the luck of the draw and not an admirable achievement [and I mean wealth earned by Irwin Jacobs and Zenbu style earning, not Goldman Sachs back door political pull extracting money from the powerless], you will see countries which are found-wealth places like Kuwait, or poor places like Zimbabwe and East Germany back in the day and North Korea today.
Here's how wealth is created. Two men [ladies do shopping] sitting in their hunter gatherer jungle wonder what they should do with their spare time having got their food stocked up for a few days. One says, "Hey, I reckon I could build a Ferrari". The other says "Really? That's amazing. Do you mean just dig up all this dirt and make it into a really souped up high performance car?" "Yes, exactly that. I was thinking about it and I reckon I have it all figured out. But I'll need some fuel, lubricants, plastics and all sorts of stuff." The other says, "Hey, what a coincidence, I had been wondering about this black oozy stuff leaking out of the ground over there and I decided I could build an oil production field and refinery as well as polymerization and all sorts of stuff. But I hadn't figured out what to do with all that. A Ferrari seems just right".
Another bloke in the next paddock overheard them and called out, "If you two are going to build Ferraris and fuel, I have worked out how to build a motorway from your paddocks to mine. Let's do it."
So the three guys set to and build Ferraris, fuels and freeways.
Another guy in the fourth paddock says. "Hey look, I found a lode of gold. I'm rich."
The other three called, "It's a load of fool's wealth, not actual wealth". They go ahead and drive around in their Ferraris with their fancy fuel on their fantastic freeways. He sits there laughing at them, clapping his hands in glee because he is wealthy. The girls get rides with the 3 guys in their Ferraris to the shopping centres.
Mqurice |
