GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic can be very effective for rapid weight loss but I think (hope?) that consumers will eventually become disillusioned with them. There are significant side effects in many patients, the weight tends to come back when the drug is stopped, and much of the weight lost is lean muscle rather than adipose tissue. There is a growing body of evidence that having a large amount of skeletal muscle is crucial for maintaining metabolic health (glucose sink) and preventing disabling falls later in life (sarcopenia).
Your new life is waiting to begin at Milo Janus, Get in shape will see you through thick and thin. Everybody! Start your day, shed pounds away.
It's all for your common wealth.
The only thing you have to gain is your health!
At the same time, though, the franchisees had plenty of greed of their own. The article states "They also say it promised them the ability to run businesses as investors rather than as hands-on managers." If your only contribution to a business is giving it money, you are essentially always better sticking that money in the stock market. If you have some special talent, skill, connections, etc. that you can leverage, sure, go for it. But the idea that you can beat the market with no special benefit that you bring to the table is a fantasy as old as capitalism.
It's been a wild ride watching this happen. A whole world I didn't know existed, and lots and lots of people getting scammed out of tons of money (there's a whole Reddit ecosystem discussing this stuff, it's both fascinating and horrifying)
What seems constant is how many people dislike being employees.
https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/coaches-coaching-co...
- use your own tools (laptop, phone, vehicle)
- set your own schedule (work hours/days)
- get paid for tasks, not hourly
- have the ability to decline jobs without losing the customer (within reason)
To me it seems like gig work is in the clear. Why is it not?
If the path to happiness is material success, and the path to material success is entrepreneurship, anything that looks like a shortcut to entrepreneurial success must be Good.
I mean, even here on HN there are plenty of people who put money into startups that predictably died - often not very different from thinly-veiled scams to provide founders with income. And let's not even get into cryptocurrencies...
I feel like EMH is increasingly becoming a strange & unfalsifiable quasi-religion for some people. I believe even the strongest forms of EMH cover publicly traded stocks, and not investments in privately held companies. Are you saying that it's literally impossible for me to invest in a local gym, real estate development, plumbing company, landscaper etc. and not beat the US equity market's average return of 9% a year? Because that's obviously ridiculously untrue. The main reason why I can't price say Apple better than the stock market can is the absolutely staggering amount of global competition to do so. But there's exponentially less competition to invest in a smaller, privately-held local business- I'm not competing with hedge funds and so on.
I'm a Boglehead, and the good parts of EMH have a lot of wise things to say about the impossibility of pricing individual publicly traded companies better than the broader stock market. But super-strong EMH has become a bit of an intellectual cult, and I see people way over-extending it into domains that it was never supposed to cover. It's becoming like a learned helplessness 'it's impossible for anything to be profitable because EMH'
I'm with the GP poster: if you're thinking about running a business in passive mode as an investment, as it seems it was pitched to those franchisees, you're highly likely better off keeping it in boring investment products. That's not even saying that sane (ie positive risk-adjusted return) passive income opportunities don't exist, but they almost certainly won't look like what's described in the article, with no strategic freedom (you're not allowed to close an unprofitable shop, wth?); apparently coupled with personal liability and massive fixed and upfront costs, that's an absolutely deadly mix. More generally, they will almost never come to you as a pitch, which should be self-evident.
[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/2526/sp-500-historical-annual-re...
1. Obviously some people with zero unique insight or skill in a business will make out big (i.e. "beat the market"), just like some people will win the lottery. But drastically increasing your risk/volatility and then saying "some people beat the market average!" is not actually a counterpoint to EMH, which primarily says something about risk-adjusted returns.
2. More importantly, though, if you do have some special insight into why a private business may outcompete its competitors, by all means, go for it. But TFA is basically highlighting that the vast majority of these people had no special skills in business, marketing, etc. beyond "I like fitness and once took one of their classes!" If you're in that boat, on average, you're better putting that money in the stock market. If you're a gambler and think you can, literally, beat the odds with nothing but luck, again, go for it, but I'm not going to have sympathy for you if you decided to, essentially, put your life savings on double-0.
Yes, without taking additional risk. SP500 is risk free, everything else, you need to be pricing in additional risk OR you need to have an edge other than providing money (which you can do buy buying VOO). hn_throwaway_99’s second paragraph explains it well.
One common arbitrage opportunity is to be part of an immigrant diaspora. They won’t have access to credit, but will be willing to work 100 hours per week. You can take advantage of that and basically use the fact that you are getting under minimum wage labor that is very invested in the business to get better than public equity returns.
I'm sorry, what?
1) I'm having trouble finding a good citation, but I remember it being a minor scandal at some point that statistically, the real-world weight loss from semaglutide was found to be roughly half what it was in the trials, probably because the trial populations were unrepresentative (younger and fewer comorbidities than the real-world population, IIRC).
2) In the face of shortages of the standard branded Ozempic/Wegovy products, a lot of people are turning to compounding pharmacies. But according to Novo Nordisk, there is no legitimate supply chain of semaglutide for them to use, so these pharmacies are apparently selling people a semaglutide salt that is manufactured as a research chemical rather than a licensed drug [1]. The FDA has also warned of outright counterfeit Ozempic getting into the supply chain, complete with fake serial and lot numbers [2].
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/ozempic-wegovy-we...
[2] https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-w...
https://peterattiamd.com/ama45/
Novo Nordisk appears to be spreading FUD to some extent. While there are scammers selling fake or adulterated semaglutide (same as with any popular prescription drug), legitimate compounding pharmacies are producing the real thing that is medically equivalent to the branded Ozempic/Wegovy products.
https://time.com/6301552/weight-loss-drugs-compounding-pharm...
I agree there appear to be non-trivial side effects to these drugs, and I certainly won't be first in line to try them out. But I expect that they will be refined substantially, and that elimination of side effects will be a key goal. For example, if the drug can be administered via pill instead of injection, it would be easier to do a lower, steadier dose, which presumably would mellow out some of the side effects. Pharma companies undoubtedly see the huge pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and will do whatever it takes to get there. The best drugs will likely always be more expensive than the earlier generations, which will be used by larger portions of the population.
But to the extent that tastemakers are the elite, I think we'll see a cultural change regarding desirable traits even if mere mortals like me aren't on the medications. The change will accelerate as the drugs become cheaper and more available to the masses.
I've been self-employed for about 6 years now, and my return on my original invested capital is hundreds of % a year. My potential losses are highly limited by being incorporated- I can always just close the business and walk away. I think it's ridiculous to compare my little company with an index fund, but I also think it's pretty silly to make sweeping statements comparing public stock markets with private investments. It's OK to say that 2 completely different things are apples & oranges
Being self-employed isn't a financial investment, it's a form of labor and most certainly not passive, hence why the comparison fails.
The fundamental feature of freelance work is that you get your own customers and you are not dependent on a market maker who cuts you in.
Some of the other criteria seem arbitrary. Of course companies want to pay their employees per task, only if a customer is present, they love zero cost employees that are available as a reserve workforce to pick up any sudden demand. A monthly base salary is a labour protection for the employee, forcing the employer to take the business risk and distribute revenues from the peak times to the slow times, ensuring a stable revenue for their workforce.
Food delivery is the same - I saw drivers have multiple different branded bags in the car when they delivered food to me.
I really don't see how it's masked employment if this can be done without any issue.
> The fundamental feature of freelance work is that you get your own customers and you are not dependent on a market maker who cuts you in.
They got their own customers - the gig work platform is the customer. How do you even define "getting their own customers"? Do I have to take them out to nice dinners? Is an ad in newspaper sufficient? What about an online ad? And what about an ad on a job platform? I worked for a private jet Air Operator company - their entire business was done through Avinode platform, that's basically Uber but for private jets. Are they masked employees of Avinode too?
Would you say that developers working through Upwork or Toptal are not freelancers? I specifically asked my tax government office this question - they said it doesn't matter whether there is a marketplace, what matters are the criteria I listed above.
> that are available as a reserve workforce to pick up any sudden demand.
That doesn't sound like "set your own schedule".
Is the software freelance market created and dominated by Upwork, which arbitrarily sets prices and defines the product? No, they are just one of the many marketplaces. Customers don't expect "an Upwork solution" because there is no such thing, they are fully aware a myriad small developers sell their services there. The small developers take on business risk and they are rewarded with market freedom.
Compare that with Uber, where customers are interacting with the company as a finite product, they "get an Uber". In many cities, there is no such thing as a "ride sharing market". Uber might compete with other transport solutions, but the individual drivers clealry do not have market freedom, they are a fungible workforce.
The notion that drivers have Uber as a customer is just silly. By that standard, any employee has their employer as a temporary important client, erasing any distinction and employee protection. The clients are clearly the riders who use the aps. Can Uber drivers compete with Uber and short circuit their fees by establishing direct to customer relationships? If it's generally no, then Uber is not a marketplace, it's an end product and the suppliers of the services are either employees or other subcontractors that have their own employment law obligations.
This sounds like it should be the concern of the government, not a business. Such as a universal basic income.
That would be a problem for a huge number of lawyers in the US.
For example
> The fundamental feature of freelance work is that you get your own customers and you are not dependent on a market maker who cuts you in.
Are electrical/plumbing/painting/etc subcontractors hired by a general contractors freelancing?