Mad Mike, the homeless blogger who became a millionaire overnight

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/24/mad-mike-homeless-blogger-millionaire

by bootload • 11 years ago

98 40 11 years ago

bootload2• 11 years ago

"“Abject poverty had kept my drinking reasonably contained,” says Mike, “but with a full bank account I tend to drink until I get sick.” Instead, he’s indulging in music. Mad Mike immediately moved his mom’s sofa, love seat and ottoman out of the living room and replaced it with thousands of dollars worth of brand new, gorgeous musical equipment:"

Love the idea of this. Ditch the furniture for creative tools.

shrikant• 11 years ago

When my wife and I moved into our first home (an unfurnished rental), we felt it was larger than we really needed. So one bedroom became the living room, one bedroom stayed the bedroom, and the actual living room was emptied of all furniture.

What did we do with all that space? Plonked down a full-size ping-pong table and became bloody good at the game over the next year or so. Good times.

hurin• 11 years ago

I only scrolled through the article - but the guy's blog is pretty well written http://madmikethehippiebum.blogspot.com/2014/04/captured.htm....

comrade12• 11 years ago

I always find it fascinating how quickly a family fortune disappears (although in this case it sounds like it's on the lower end of the scale of wealth). It usually only takes one or two generations.

One way of reducing the chance of this is to not split the inheritance. Even a vast fortune is reduced to below self-sustaining levels in just a couple of generations.

In my family I had a polish/Lithuanian aristocracy ancestor that owned some towns and large landholdings (he had some sort of wood monopoly). In three generations the families were still wealthy and in the aristocracy but were living off their title more than their wealth.

Another friend of mine's family from India who's grandfather was some sort of king has been splitting their lands up each generation. They recently sold off the las of their lands that had the ancestral home, a couple of forts and temples, etc and now are all just living pretty mundane suburban lives.

xcyu• 11 years ago

Reminds me of the book The Son Also Rises which had similar anecdotes.

http://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Son_Also_Rises.html?i...

anentropic• 11 years ago

this is good though

Ntrails• 11 years ago

Inheritance distorts society, I agree, but I'm not sure how that differs from wealth itself? In many ways much of the inequality comes from privileges of wealth before inheritance rather than after.

agumonkey• 11 years ago

I guess it's a non issue for rich people, you can always pay a crew to maintain the assets. For normal people, inheritance is quickly unbearable (financial or interpersonal issues), and everybody just want to make it go away.

pjc502• 11 years ago

Inheritance is essential for the people still living in the house or on the family farm, although that's kind of a minority these days.

Ironically many of the historically wealthy couldn't maintain the assets. The UK is full of stately homes whose owners couldn't maintain or sometimes even heat. The nicer ones have been given to the heritage industry; many of the rest went through periods of requisition and/or dereliction. A random example that is now IBM Hursley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hursley_House

moe• 11 years ago

I always find it fascinating how quickly a family fortune disappears

That's a good thing and the reason why e.g. the Inheritance Tax exists.

Inherited wealth sabotages the fundamental reward mechanisms of society and ultimately harms it by bringing the wrong people into positions of power.

levosmetalo• 11 years ago

While I agree here with you, it's not only the inheritance that saboatages this reward mechanism. It's also the capital gains. If we were to value hard work and real contribution, then income / salary tax should be much lover that capital gains tax. We should just value human effort more.

comrade12• 11 years ago

I don't disagree that it's a good thing for society for generational wealth to be dispersed. But I think for your family and descendents it's probably for the better to keep the fortune whole.

Someone brought up the Rockefellers - that is an example of keeping the fortune whole. It's controlled by only the male members of the family and it is locked up in a single family trust.

kristjansson• 11 years ago

Tocqueville identifies the division of estates and fortunes as essential to equality and democracy:

But the law of inheritance was the last step to equality. I am surprised that ancient and modern jurists have not attributed to this law a greater influence on human affairs. ... When the legislator has once regulated the law of inheritance, he may rest from his labor. The machine once put in motion will go on for ages, and advance, as if self-guided, towards a point indicated beforehand. [0]

The whole passage is worth the read, and well supports your point that the effect of inheritance taxes is both societal (smaller estates) and individual (different incentives for wealthy progeny)

[0] https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=xZfiBEzcPTEC&printse...

Frozenlock• 11 years ago

I inherit wealth from my past self.

If I earned $100 yesterday, I have $100 available to spend today.

Is it destroying the 'fundamental reward mechanisms of society'?

What is the difference if you substitute myself with say one of my children? The wealth was still earned, I should still be able to decide what to do with it.

I would recommend this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwUaVDIPXg

If anything, the tax is what is destroying the fundamental reward mechanisms of society.

cafard• 11 years ago

Yes and no. Here the Rockefellers, Fords, Kennedys seem to be doing pretty well. None, I suppose has the clout of the previous or prior generations, but they aren't out on the street.

The Polish and Lithuanians I suppose were dispossessed in part by land reform.

macNchz• 11 years ago

Yes and no. Here the Rockefellers, Fords, Kennedys seem to be doing pretty well. None, I suppose has the clout of the previous or prior generations, but they aren't out on the street.

Sometimes the appearance and trappings of wealth—social connections, grand houses, an important name, legacy at ivy league schools, etc—can last longer than the money itself. Obviously these can set people up to have great success on their own, but they can also simply mask to the outside world the fact that the family fortune has been diluted among great-grandchildren and squandered by a crazy uncle and a couple of divorces gone wrong.

Red_Tarsius• 11 years ago

The article is very interesting, but what strikes me most is:

“Three out of five of our siblings have committed suicide. Mike’s mother is the third...”

Is this only an unfortunate chain of events? Is there some biological cause to the high number of suicides in his family?

leoedin• 11 years ago

I think it's pretty well established that there's a genetic component to depression and many other mental illnesses. See for example [1], [2] and [3].

[1] http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/05May/Pages/genetic-link-to-depr...

[2] http://depressiongenetics.stanford.edu/mddandgenes.html

[3] http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=84...

kordless• 11 years ago

Parents and their parents can fuck a family up beyond all recognition. It might be hereditary or hereditary by causality. Either way, the suffering is the same.

JonnieCache• 11 years ago

This was voted the UK's favourite poem IIRC, and has been famously quoted in court. There have been few truer words spoken:

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
        They may not mean to, but they do.   
    They fill you with the faults they had
        And add some extra, just for you.
    
    But they were fucked up in their turn
        By fools in old-style hats and coats,   
    Who half the time were soppy-stern
        And half at one another’s throats.
    
    Man hands on misery to man.
        It deepens like a coastal shelf.
    Get out as early as you can,
        And don’t have any kids yourself.

alashley• 11 years ago

True, but at some point we all have to make an effort to move past that as difficult as it may be.

Rainymood• 11 years ago

“Three out of five of our siblings have committed suicide. Mike’s mother is the third,”

Jezus christ that is simply terrible ...

facepalm• 11 years ago

I wonder if the best investment advice would be to convert the 1,8 Million into a pension, so that he can not just squander it away on a drunk binge?

Then again it's probably also possible to squander away the pension by getting loans against it.

Some kind of Ulysses contract should be possible?

And what are the legalities of signing contracts while drunk - do they count? Afaik people are not legally able to consent to sex while drunk, so perhaps contracts/agreements should be impossible while drunk?

gms7777• 11 years ago

IANAL, but from glancing around online, it looks as though you are in general held responsible for contracts and agreements made when you are intoxicated. The exceptions seem to be when the intoxication is not voluntary (i.e. if you're drugged), or if you're so far gone that you can't understand what you're agreeing to and the other party "takes advantage" of your intoxication.

buro92• 11 years ago

When I was homeless I met a guy also on the streets. He was given a council flat (as I later was) and moved in.

When I visited him some months later, his place was a tip. He hadn't managed to adjust to coming off the streets. His electric had been disconnected as he'd failed to pay the bill (he received benefits to cover this), and he cooked on a camping stove on the floor of the living room. There was trash everywhere.

He just wasn't ready to come off the streets.

He had gone onto the streets after a nervous breakdown, brought on by divorce from his wife (I think... I have some difficulty remembering who experienced what). He'd lost it all, and was no longer mentally equipped to deal with life. He remained charming, intelligent and good company, but just a shade of whom he must've once been. Never saw him again, but his struggle to adjust hit me hard.

I remember my own challenge with the adjustment. For a while I too lived in just the living room... a thin mattress on a broken tile floor, a camping stove and a walkman for company. But I'd seen that this wasn't what you do, and that you had to form patterns, new routines, and spread out in the space, compartmentalize living functions to different spaces and form new routines around those functions.

I used to have a calendar on the wall to tell me what day it was (since I no longer saw the rhythm of the world around me), and it would remind me when to pay bills, or run chores. It was the little things that I now take for granted that were difficult for me. Why go out? Why speak to anyone? The things I had needed for so long (a dry warm space, the ability to bathe when I chose, a safe place to sleep, food when I needed it) I now had in abundance, so why do anything? Why even pick up the trash? Or make the bed?

I've believed since coming off the streets that it is less about physically providing the roof over a head, and is more to do with providing the support to help someone or targeting only those who are ready to leave the streets. Both sound horribly ambiguous and no doubt would leave space for a truck to drive through if enacted as policy, but the essence is that a person who has spent time on the street needs help to have an epiphany about caring for themselves and their surroundings, about functioning in a new space.

junto• 11 years ago

What you are describing are habits. Most people require habitual processes. Your friend needed to have new habits to survive in a world where you need to tidy up around you, go to work every days and pay the household bills.

It is hard to switch into new habits, which is often the core challenge for people stuck in a rut with alcohol and drug abuse.

People forget that habits are easy to change, but it takes persistence and determination. When you speak to people who are reformed alcoholics, drug free or have quit smoking for good after a few years they often cannot fathom why they couldn't have quit sooner. At the time the challenge seems impossible.

I personally find habitual rituals fascinating. As someone who has twice been stuck in unhealthy habits, I now realise the power of habits, when turned around for good practices.

One book that helped me was "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". I recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/The-Habits-Highly-Effective-People/dp/...

AndrewOMartin• 11 years ago

Seems to me that you don't need the "ready" or "epiphany" hypothesis, just stick with supporting someone's transition.

Coming off the streets without any transition support is not only being "thrown in the deep end" but also removing someone from their previous life on the streets where they'd probably somewhat adapted, and had something of a routine and community.

imgabe• 11 years ago

How do you tell when someone is ready to come in off the streets? If you've been there a long time and have adjusted to it, I don't see how staying there longer is going to make you more prepared for the transition. It sounds like we need to provide help - counseling, therapy, etc. - to people coming off the streets.

buro92• 11 years ago

Good question. For which I have no answer.

But if the other replies are right and this is really just about habit changing, then that is where the support and focus should exist.

Perhaps the key is to move people into shared temporary houses to build those habits together before being moved on?

bootload2• 11 years ago

beautiful writing David.

thektrn• 11 years ago

What a misleading title! At first I thought he'd written a blog that earned him a million in one night. Good for him though.

daddykotex• 11 years ago

Exact same thoughts here!

quietone1• 11 years ago

I see many, many homeless people everyday. Last week I was in a hurry and sat down on the subway next to a homeless man. Within seconds I almost passed out from the overpowering stench of his clothes and body. For some reason, perhaps pity, I didn't want him to see me get up and move to the other end of the car. So I sat there for an agonizing 10 minutes until my stop, and gasped for fresh air when I emerged from the underground. I thought about it - what if I was him, and all I wanted was to not smell like that. How would I do it? I'd need a shower with soap, and new clothes - no way we could clean those old ones. With no friends or support, I had no idea how I'd do it short of begging enough for a bar of soap and then jumping into a chlorinated fountain in a park. And then what? Maybe I smell better for a day or two and then it starts all over again. I'll try to be less judgmental about the homeless, after realizing that.

cubano2• 11 years ago

I've teetered on the brink of homelessness for a few years now due to very poor life choices and an overbearing legal systems that convicted me, for all practical purposes, for the act of doing drugs in private.

I am firmly convinced that homelessness and living that life of rejecting convention has to do with deep-seated emotional scarring that should be much more akin to brain damage than a failure of "will power" (whatever that really means in a neuroscience way)

Cutting edge NS research[0] is proving again and again that we simply do not make decisions the way we all (most?) want to believe we do, in a rational and self-interested way.

This research has deep implications for all sorts of anti-social behaviours, and, especially for me at least, addiction.

I feel this hard emotional tug to escape into oblivion almost every-time I see others so easily create emotionally and sexually meaningful relationships, where I seem to fail at it miserably and have for my whole life.

Recently, I commented upon an Autism post where some of the symptoms of this disease (the inability to create and/or maintain social connections) shocked me to the point of tears, and have been pondering the connections between addiction and it ever since.

We can talk about habits and chances and everything, but if a person is just tired of hurting internally and has the choice between another night of lonely pain and escape, I'm hard pressed to blame them for escaping.

But hey, that's just me.

[0] http://www.kavlifoundation.org/science-spotlights/neuroscien...

blub2• 11 years ago

I think it's hard for a lot of people to create emotionally and sexually meaningful relationships. Unless you've had out of the ordinary incidents like being slapped, punched and so on, it's probably a lack of opportunities combined with some bad luck and maybe a lack of understanding how relationships can be "hacked" a bit to help them along.

My theory is that the way we form relationships is a combination of innate ability (1) and learned behaviour (2).

(1) is common to each human and includes things such as interpreting facial expressions, sense of touch, etc, even though I agree that conditions such as autism can have a significant negative impact here. Still, you said you are failing, which means you are trying and you do express a desire to succeed, so I am guessing that this is not what's preventing you from succeeding, but rather it's something related to your beliefs and behaviours. Which leads me to...

(2) this behaviour is normally learned as we grow up, as a combination of advice from parents, your social circle and simply experimenting. But if one has an unusual childhood, parents that teach them "wrong" things, is e.g. bullied or simply has bad luck, they might end up either not knowing what to do to form a romantic relationship or even doing the opposite of what they should do. In which case they have to learn by themselves. Now I don't know the particulars of your situation, but have you read available literature about how human sexuality and relationships work? e.g: Pittman's Man Enough, Miller's Mating Mind, Meston's Why Women Have Sex. This might be a starting point in better understanding what's happening and why you find things difficult.

cubano2• 11 years ago

I think my real issues are significantly different from what you may think they are. I've read many behavior and relationship books over the years in my quest to improve my life, but in the end, I seem to be unable to make those "hacks" work in my life.

I've had all the opportunity I could really ever hope for. I was very athletic and popular way, way back in high school, played in a relatively successful rock band for a decade after that, and have a great sense of humor. I am tall (6'3"), dark, but not very handsome :)

Put simply, at a core level, I don't really trust anyone, which turns out to be a nasty self-enforcing attitude.

My earliest childhood memory is of being abandoned, by my Mom, at her sister's house for months and being kept alone, stuck in crib and unattended for most of that time.

I had no idea what was happening and vaguely remember crying until exhaustion day after day, wondering where my Mom was and why she was doing this to me.

I am, personally, 100% convinced that this event, in MY case, led me to my lifelong struggles with relationships and addiction, and that the trauma caused by it created physical damage in the neuronic wiring of my brain.

The odd part is, it wasn't until my Mom talked to me about it a few years before her passing that I was even able to remember it, but when she did it all came back to me; the room, the crib, her scary and unloving sister, my despair.

And listen, I am not trying to turn this into some sort of psycho-babble nonsense...I so very much appreciate your caring words and in no way am I trying to disrespect them or you.

Mad Mike, the homeless blogger who became a millionaire overnight

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