Millionaire Wanabees

I just read an article called "The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabees" at a blog called Conceptual Guerilla, which site is unfortunately a cheerleader for the Keynesians (I guess when Keynes disavowed his own economic theory later in life, the blogger didn't get the memo).

But the article made me think about when I was in real estate and lending and consumed a number of real estate guru audio/book courses (from the REIA library mostly) and was also in an MLM at roughly the same time. This article calls people who consume these courses "Dittoheads" because he thinks they believe the hype with the bimbo on the hood of the fancy car that some of these courses have, and that they are then somehow angered by Rush Limbaugh into becoming right-wing when they don't get rich.

Only the cheesiest of the real estate courses used pictures of yachts, bimbos, and fancy cars. I saw one that had that, and it was laughed at by my fellow real estate investors. But MLM is FULL of that kind of crass consumerist attitude, probably because it's the lowest common denominator image of wealth (not the bimbo, but everything else), and they're not exactly trying to attract smart people to MLM.  People fall in and out of MLM all the time and I don't think it changes their politics.  They usually don't stay all that long, because MLM doesn't work for 99% of the people who try it.

The "Dittoheads" in real estate were looky-loos who had corporate day jobs and thought that they could get rich quick in real estate.  They would come to the meetings, buy the selling speakers' courses, but they would never actually buy a piece of property. I'm not sure of their politics; however I'm guessing they already tended to the right, as corporate types tend to.

I have met several real estate investors who actually did get rich.  They worked hard at it, but more importantly, they followed good advice and instruction from their peers locally and not just any stupid get-rich guru's course material.  They helped newbies like me for free.  I would not call these people "dittoheads".

When you are a landlord, which anyone actually in real estate ends up as eventually, you learn the joys of dealing with tenants and all the stupid things they do, like spend the rent money on a big screen TV, pot and lotto tickets, and break everything in the house, then call the building inspector on you to try to avoid having to pay you YOUR rent.  And then when you sue for the rent, they get a free lawyer that YOUR taxes paid for.  You get to see how your poor downtrodden tenants won't clean the damn house, and bring in roaches, and let their dog crap all over the yard. Or the wonderful world of HUD bureaucracy.  It was enough to turn me from a Dem to a Libertarian.

Eventually I went belly up.  Why did I "fail" in real estate? Not because I was disappointed by a bad real estate guru.  After all I had been in business for ten years.  It was a number of things. My business partner got ripped off at a closing, then he had a tenant move out and steal the plumbing, then he came down with cancer; there was the credit collapse which wrecked our business plan, and practically all our tenants lost their jobs at once and moved out or we had to evict them, plus one of them stole all of the kitchen appliances from one house; and we also had a furnace and a water heater blow up.  And then I got laid off.  A little later I had the plumbing stolen out of one of my houses that was vacant.  All in the space of six months. 

I did not go right wing because I went belly up.  It happened before that.  I went right wing because I saw that most of the hindrances to my business and well being came from the left.  I am tired of my taxes going to facilitate the Tyranny of the Nice.  We have to be nice to everyone, so Big Brother is going to take your money and give it to a bunch of people who want to eat gravy for a living.  Not just welfare recipients but large corporations, apparatchiks, social workers, compliance officers, greenie weenies, and plaintiffs' attorneys.

And I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh.  He sets my teeth on edge.

So here the article is.  Now that I've done my polemic you can read what set me off.

"The Wrath of the Millionaire Wanabees"
at http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47