Moral of the story doesn't have anything to do with passive income. The moral is to save some freaking money instead of spending every dime you have, and this is true whether you are making tons of money or just a little. (passively or not)
Also, why has "Passive Income" become such an evil thing around here? It doesn't have to be a scam or BS or something. It could just be someone did a ton of work on the front end and then gets paid for it over time "passively". I make money off of software that I spent lots of time on that creates value for people. The fact that people keep buying it now that it's done makes the income somewhat "passive" (still have to update things over time, but minimal relative to initial investment of time).
There is nothing wrong with passive income. There is something wrong with doing scammy fraudulent things with affiliate marketing. These 2 things don't overlap entirely so stop acting like they do. Frankly, both of these stories sound like they mostly didn't do anything scammy. They just made a lot of money and then spent a lot of money. Lots of people do that all the time with non-passive 9-5 jobs, but they don't get on the front page of HN.
> why has "Passive Income" become such an evil thing around here?
In general the lifestyle business is criticized here, but ironically at the same time people who build startups are acquired by their skills/talent more than from the startup itself. At the end both are lifestyle businesses except if you are the next Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple/IBM or if you are Dropbox and refuse to be acquired by Apple!
Also, why has "Passive Income" become such an evil thing around here? It doesn't have to be a scam or BS or something. It could just be someone did a ton of work on the front end and then gets paid for it over time "passively". I make money off of software that I spent lots of time on that creates value for people. The fact that people keep buying it now that it's done makes the income somewhat "passive" (still have to update things over time, but minimal relative to initial investment of time).
There is nothing wrong with passive income. There is something wrong with doing scammy fraudulent things with affiliate marketing. These 2 things don't overlap entirely so stop acting like they do. Frankly, both of these stories sound like they mostly didn't do anything scammy. They just made a lot of money and then spent a lot of money. Lots of people do that all the time with non-passive 9-5 jobs, but they don't get on the front page of HN.