• michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This was tested…sort of. He didn’t give away his money he just supposedly didn’t make use of it essentially hitting the road as a fake homeless and making money by selling stuff he bought on facebook market.

    The fellow was a millionaire not a billionaire and I think he went from nothing to ~50k in nearly a year. He called it off early because he was basically destroying his health.

    • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Yeah, with friends housing him and hiring him 🤡

      Not to mention that actually poor people don’t have a cheat code to get them out when their health suffers. Which then makes them less able to keep working at maximum mental and physical capacity.

      So this was nothing but a demonstration that nepotism and money is what one really needs.

      • golli@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        He could also take higher risks, since he knew that there was a security net to catch him. Much easier to make high risk/reward decisions, if the risk (e.g. going broke) isn’t actually real. He presumably also had an above average education and many other benefits. This is also why many rich people might end up building successful businesses. The average person might get one shot and either makes it or goes broke. The rich person can roll the dice multiple times (and might have learned something from the last try).

        Also disregarding everything even, if he had succeded: That would still only have been a sample size of one. I doubt anyone is saying that you can’t under any circumstances pull yourself out of poverty, but on average the cards are just stacked against you in many ways.

        Also i doubt that reselling second hand stuff is a viable business model for a larger group. Like sure in a large city a few people might be able to carve out a niche for themself, but the more people do it or the smaller the market, the less it works.

      • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13332399/Millionaire-Mike-Black-homeless-broke-purpose-ends-bizarre-social-experiment.html He made 64,000 before he tapped out. His trajectory is also not entirely kosher

        Eventually, a man with an RV allowed him to stay for several nights in his van. Black started off small and managed to make his first $300 by selling furniture online.

        Nobody lets a homeless stay in their van to bootstrap their buy and sell craigslist furniture business

        Three months into the challenge, Black’s entrepreneurial spirit appeared to shine through having set himself up as a social media manager, managing to land clients - while even coming up with his own brand of coffee.

        Most people who were homeless 90 days prior is going to be in a position to be appointed someone’s social media manager or else they likely wouldn’t even be homeless in the first place.

        Even with obvious cheat codes he couldn’t get more than 64k starting from “zero” wherein zero means being homeless in nice gear with your $1000 phone and unlimited internet plan with a health plan and a GP and specialists

        Throughout the entire project, we haven’t shared it with you, but I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.’