Yes.
As I teach these simple principles of wealth to the naive (or indoctinated) I usually give both ends of the 10,000-year-equation I also point out that a zero-sum-game means that in their philosophical view, a standing building has the same value as rubble because the mind of man and the consequent added value of building has no meaning.
The philosophy of Nihilism is strangely abundant in these young people.

Interesting question. Wealth can be tangible or intangible. ~ 20 years ago I was doing some IT work for the owner of a Family Office (a type of private accountant for wealthy folks). One day the owner was lamenting a sharp decline in the Dow Jones and commented "A lot of wealth was destroyed today." My reply was that real-wealth cannot be destroyed by the stroke of a pen, but balances sheets can be rendered less valuable than the paper they're printed on. A lengthy discussion ensued.

People who believe in the Zero Sum view of wealth are not only ignorant, naive, and clueless, they are dangerous! Simply put, wealth is the result of productive of labor. The more potential labor there is, the more potential wealth that may be created. Of course, here is also an irreducible drain on wealth necessary to sustain life. All that implies that there MUST be a net positive creation of wealth in order to stave off the ultimate catastrophe; the exhaustion of tangible wealth which would extinguish all life.

The call Economics the dismal science, because when the effects of its laws are analyzed to their limits, the outcomes are undesirable to say the least.

I have read some of this author's work. On the financial stuff, for me, it was all sizzle and no steak. But, I loved his commentary on public education. His father was a mucky-muck in public schools in Hawaii and he gives some great insight on the history of public education.

Interesting commentary, Mike. I was a landlord years ago. No more. I hated it.

I recently heard they theory that when you buy a piece of property you are investing in the local economy. I tend to agree with that. I could buy more real estate again now if I wanted. Haven't pulled the trigger on that.

Thank you, I will look for those books.

While you make the claim that ‘individual effort is required’ I am curious what you would qualify as having sufficient individual effort.

The Rich Dad goal for letting money make money without effort is a way of saying invest the money in a way that does not require constant management actions on your part like a job does. The idea is that you efficiently use your time and resources. To claim that Atlas Shrugged requires otherwise is to ignore the character Midas Mulligan. He was an investment banker who would fit the description of making money without individual effort by that poor description of things from Kiyosaki’s book. That description from Kiyosaki’s book (when taken out of context) blindly ignores the individual effort made by investors. Anyone who thinks that investors who are consistently making good investment choices in profitable manners are doing so without significant individual effort needs to read two books. The first book is ‘The Intelligent Investor’ written by Benjamin Graham, I recommend the edition with commentary by Jason Zweig. The second book I recommend is ‘Security Analysis’ by Benjamin Graham. All business owners will tell you that the best business there is to own is the one where a check shows up in the mail box, and cashing it is the fullest extent of your effort. They also will tell you that as the investor, you are the last person to get paid, and it is your skin in the game. You must keep in mind that business has risk, and managing risk requires effort.

I find that commonly; when someone points to successful investing as a flaw in the social justice fabric of an economy, they do so out of covetousness. That covetousness often blinds a person to their own options and innovative potential.

Along these general lines of letting money make money I have seen people referring to dollars as slaves used to make more dollars. I tend to like this following phrase/concept better. Money is a reasonably decent tool, money is a lazy slave, money is a poor friend, and money is a destructive idol. Choose wisely how you interact with it.

First, thank you for your service to this country.

Second, no, I don't consider you to be a moocher, though the cost-of-living increases in the Social Security payments are essentially that.

And, thank you for your feedback.

To take your example of delivering papers: the manager is inspired by greed to expand the services provided by his employees. Some of the means he may use is marketing effort on his part (I've seen this locally), using his own labor to increase revenue; offering incentives to the delivery persons based on customer satisfaction. All of these require the expenditure of intellectual labor to generate jobs, so I don't think this is a good example.

I'm a retiree, earning income from monies I contributed to Social Security and investments in 401K, plus a military retirement. By your standards, I'm nothing but a slug, because I'm not expending any effort for the income I currently receive, but I don't think many of the others in this forum would agree.

not sure what you are attributing to "RichDadPoorDad"...the idea of accumulating wealth by letting your money work for you is the capitalist way...your money should work hard for you...you should not have to work hard for your money...knowing how to make your money work hard for you involves thought and effort...as in RichDad buying homes and renting them out to others not as wise with their money...

i have employed this strategy all my life and it has worked out well...i had to earn the money to buy the house and then find a renter that would take care of my investment...

now, i do the same thing in stocks and options...i buy an option long term for around $.10 on the dollar of what it would cost to buy the stock...then i sell the front month...if i have researched the company i am buying the long term option properly, it should continue to go up...this is call a LEAPS strategy...selling the front month option against it is called a Synthetic Buy Write, which is simulating a Covered Call (which simulates buying a house and renting it out)...this is what is called working smarter not harder...i am able to make up to 10 times the profit in the same amount of time...I did this with AZO (auto zone parts) at the start of 2009...because of the recession, individuals were holder onto their cars longer, requiring more repairs for upkeep...AZO went from $100/share to almost $800 today...an 800% increase is not bad, but i have made well over $30,000 in the same amount of time by letting my money make money...

Correct. Very good.
Now: Think of money and time as being the same thing. Money is simply a medium of exchange (of time).
Some people are able to multiply time thanks to technology and cheap motive power (and their ability to multiply two-and-two thanks to these said technologies).

Should they not take that extra time and create (hopefully) more time?

As I could garner from Atlas Shrugged, and I tend to agree with her sentiments, wealth / value is created when someone performs a service or produces an item (that has value to someone or something).

Compared to 10,000 years ago? * ... boy, now you're stretching my memory.. * I believe we were just a bunch of people starting out as farmers; I think we had a few items to barter with - grain for sharp rocks and bows & arrows... maybe a shelter.

The difference is now we have wealth temporarily encapsulated in a common currency. But wealth is still dependent upon someone producing a service or a product valuable to others willing to trade an amount of currency for the service or item.

In the third section of the book, as Dagny is introduced to the Gulch, every individual in the Gulch has a productive purpose. Each purpose requires some amount of 'individual effort'.

Sp_cebux:
Question: Do you view value/wealth as a concrete, an abstraction or a potentiality?
Often, I run into a person who thinks of "wealth" as:
There is (X) amount of "wealth" in this world...some have it and some don't.
...or rather: "Wealth" is something that comes to a person through conniving and manipulation rather than by working.
If that is your starting point, then take some time and consider how much "wealth" there is in the world today vs. how much there was 10,000 years ago ...
...and what is the difference?
How did the increase happen?

No, it was not meant as a troll question. My sincere ignorance seems to be on full parade here.

I grovel before the gawds of the Gulch. Please have mercy on my unworthiness.

I am clueless. Hence the question. Thank you for assisting me in answering my question. 👍

One of RD's key missions is to convince people to put a significant amount of their money into an income-producing asset (like a rental property) vs something that is best described as consumption (like a house or a car). As a landlord who does a lot of his own maintenance, I can attest that this job cannot be done "without effort." I do outsource many jobs, but always manage the process and often supervise the work. All of that takes time and effort, too. So, I would not say that what I do is entirely "individual effort," although there is plenty of that. The Objectivist virtue of Independence does not mean you do it all yourself. There is a great deal of commonality in what RD advises and the way an Objectivist conducts business.

Cashflow is a favourite under my roof. I'll still never forget one time when my wife won the game in the shortest possible time - 4 moves.

My wife once made the mistake of applying for a Rich Dad "business mentor".

On the first phone conversation, this "mentor" demanded she raise USD$5000 by maxing out all the credit cards and borrowing money from friends and family. However, he would not explain what the money was for, and would not agree to any further conversation till the money was raised.

Needless to say, common sense prevailed and she ditched him.

One area where this discussion gets hairy is with respect to children and inheritance. In this area, a fundamental belief in property rights implies a fundamental belief in unearned wealth - wealth given or bequeathed purely due to parental affection, with no consideration to the works or values of the recipient.

Managing others to do the work is still work and effort... I would argue considerably more so. I manage dozens of people that build software systems, I could do some of it myself, but I wouldn't be able to do so on the scale needed or on the turnaround times. It simply takes more people. At the same time, I can't think of a single of of the people being managed that is ready or capable at this point of their careers of managing people, a project, or a business, to say nothing of the labor & tax strategies involved in complex government project P&L. They will someday - but I was also doing this before most of them were born. It takes time, education, experience. Management of multiple resources is certainly 'effort' and 'work'. I'm working on a 600 page software systems proposal right now... I'm going to go out on a limb and say that none of the H1B's could do this either...

Is this a strawman troll? In the case of Pure Capitalism, the 'money' is 'working' because it is invested or loaned and is 'at-risk' that means the money is effectively exchanges for partnership/ownership. The profits returned (if any) are different dollars than the ones originally supplied.

First let me state that I only read the tag line here.

With that said there is NOTHING wrong (or against Objectivism) with allowing your money to make money due to investments.

And with your assessment of rental properties... I agree, I've had several, in the end, I never made a penny on any of them minus the tax deductibility and depreciation, which actually helps me quite a bit. But the 'income' is only paying myself back the money I earned and spent on taxes. It doesn't cover the 'oh shit' moments when people don't pay the rent and I have another mortgage payment to make.

The only stuff I'd be really 'ok' with owning I think would be small commercial that can be triple-net leased out, the tenant pays the taxes, insurance, maintains the property, etc., but then you are also in the risk area of betting on the success of someone else's business that you have zero visibility into.

At the end of the day, at 7-9 years from retirement, I'm starting to kind of value simplicity in planning, so it keeps being "less than completely interesting".

You clearly haven't read RD, or you would have remembered that Kiyosaki and his wife were homeless for a while, while building up their nest egg. That doesn't sound like they were taking advantage of people. The bottom line is, the only way to create wealth is to have your money work for you, rather than you working for money. The leverage available by having your money work for you is the only way to accumulate wealth. What is money? It's unconsumed work.

I think it is quite obvious the poster did not. It's a pretty clueless statement. I read maybe half or 75% of the series, and I can't actually think of a single instance where there was any correlation.