How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

by yarapavan • 7 years ago

392 178 7 years ago

Its not very helpful in a specific way. Little business aphorisms. Same dude with a poor argument against UBI from literally an entrepeneural perspective

tomcam• 7 years ago

How is his argument flawed? And is it intrinsically flawed because he comes from “literally an entrepreneurial perspective”? If so what should the right perspective be?

aiscapehumanity2• 7 years ago

A perspective grounded in the reality of the gradience of intelligences and inginuity. Posts screams to me of an optimism bias, same dude probably thinks making a startup is hard is a myth created by the shortsighted. Not saying i have a grand perspective but the socioeconomic timeline (to come, is <be>coming is more complex, more nuanced, and we have not yet fathomed the depths to this accelerating future yet. UBI is a reactionary utilitarian policy thats like a big net to compensate. What naval promotes is not even that.

dhfromkorea• 7 years ago

It would have been more interesting if they could share deeper, nuanced arguments for setting wealth as the objective function. Sure, wealth past a certain point admits a lot of freedom---but what next beyond that point? But the utility function over wealth (x: wealth, y: utility) is sub-modular in nature. When the curve gets flat, what metric must one use to measure her life's worth? Is there even one as such? Having followed their opinions for quite some time, I know they must have some good opinions on these...

karmakaze• 7 years ago

I imagine when you get to that point you focus in transforming x into y or just produce y independent of x.

gowld3• 7 years ago

Usual not, though. People get stuck on X, or just squandering it on expensive luxury.

lilsoso• 7 years ago

He has covered these issues with more detail and nuance. For example, see his recent two hour interview on the Joe Rogan podcast. The point is achieving happiness. He's quite philosophical about this, give his material a try.

mrnobody_67• 7 years ago

Wealth = freedom to do what you want.

For some people with minimal lifestyles in low cost areas of the US (or living internationally) that can be $30K.

I think the series does a good job covering principles such as leverage (software, capital, labour) which are rarely taught in school.

Most financial planners only talk about cutting costs, not making more money, because they don't know how... this is the opposite.

darkmighty2• 7 years ago

Wealth = freedom to do what you want

Once you're wealthy, kind of :) (there are some complications and the fact that often the main limitations of doing what we want are usually not wealth, but not knowing what we'd want the most in the first place, or lacking courage/skill to pursue it)

But there's the process of getting wealthy, which can include self-restriction of freedoms...

firstplacelast2• 7 years ago

Possibly.

The wealthiest person I ever dated (he wasn't super wealthy while we were together just doing well, but I just saw him a month ago and he was excited because he CAN retire now but doesn't want to - he's 38) spent TONS of money doing rich people things in the pursuit of wealth, he stretched his bank account very thin over and over doing this.

Going to Sundance, Cannes, Burning Man, TED, etc to network. Spending gobs of money on impressing friends and others he wanted to be friends with. Picking up thousand dollar tabs for groups of people then minorly freaking out the next day.

But spend money to make money. Worked for him. And he got to be super self-indulgent along the way.

PopeDotNinja3• 7 years ago

Wealth = freedom to do what you want.

I have a friend who is pretty wealthy. I've noticed he spends a fair amount of time worrying that his money is secure. Seems like the ultimate first world problem to me, but it's real.

gnicholas3• 7 years ago

Seems like the issue is having enough cushion so that your lifestyle is well below your means, so you can invest very conservatively without having to worry about your circumstances changing.

Of course, this can be accomplished by either dramatically increasing your assets, or by dramatically decreasing your expenditures.

ralphstodomingo• 7 years ago

The thing is, the mindset that gets you wealth isn't necessarily the same mindset that makes you realize the true value of it which makes you secure. Non-exclusive sets, I say. There can be two types of people who get to the top.

ca98am79• 7 years ago

Wealth != freedom to do what you want

Freedom to do what you want is given to you at birth

quickpost• 7 years ago

Naval's original tweet storm is really worth reading (as is some of the discussion around it on twitter): https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936

sytelus• 7 years ago

Thanks for reposting the source. Lots of great quotes like,

There are no get rich quick schemes. That's just someone else getting rich off you.

The most interesting part for me, however, is discussion of removing the element of luck. Naval doesn't clearly elaborate on this but keeps making assertions that anyone can be deterministically lucky. The only "insight" I could gather is: specialize in something, start business and sell products. Obviously, that's exactly where you need to get lucky: right thing to specialize in, right product to create and run business over long enough duration despite of million failure points.

busymom0• 7 years ago

Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.

Anyone have any book recommendations for these? Any favorites?

whatamidoingyo• 7 years ago

Psychology Persuasion

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a must read. Also, Robert Greene books, such as the 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, etc. are really good as well, but the 48 Laws of Power gave me a weird feeling. You should also read Edward Bernays, as he's one of the fathers of modern marketing/media. (Disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist).

Mathematics

I like to go through text books, but my absolute favorite book that I've read is The Motion Paradox by Joseph Mazur(brother of the great Barry Mazur) - it's what really sparked my interest in mathematics. There's also Fermat's Enigma(reads like a novel, really nice). I also have another book called Problem Solving Through Recreational Mathematics, published by dover thrift editions. It's a fun book, with a bunch of puzzles based on various subjects. Also A History of Mathematics is a nice read too, mostly for reference, but you could probably make reading a chapter a day a thing.

lars512• 7 years ago

The 48 Laws of Power also gave me a strange feeling, it was hard for me to express it at the time.

It seemed like a manual for operating in a world where you and everyone around you is motivated by increasing their power, a zero-sum world of dominance.

That might be true locally for the environments in which some people operate, but it’s not true generally for everyone, since luckily humans are equipped with more complex motivations than only the desire to dominate others.

gnicholas3• 7 years ago

Game Theory: The Strategy of Conflict, by Schelling.

Microeconomics is useful, but behavioral economics would be where I'd spend more time. It's a cross between econ and psych.

rc_hadoken• 7 years ago

Games People Play by Eric Berne MD

dang• 7 years ago

From last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17203304

warp_factor2• 7 years ago

I used to follow that guy religiously then I realized that he knew how to hack the "attention" system on social media. He is famous for what really is little fluffy sentences that would get retweeted and make him look like a wise man with the ultimate truth about everything.

Now I see him as a huge hack. Almost a complete parody of Silicon Valley.

JamesBarney7• 7 years ago

I think you nailed it with the term "parody" of every piece of self-help advice out there. This post reads like a buzzfeed article "21 ways to get rich". Here's a thousand soundbytes that very aren't actionable or who knows if any of them are right.

jraines• 7 years ago

David Foster Wallace said something about how when elite athletes try to say how they got there, it ends up sounding mostly like clichés, but that it's probably because most clichés became such because they hold some truth[1].

And yeah, they definitely look worse when listed off in bulk. You're probably best off picking a small handful that play to your strengths as a person and figuring out how to ruthlessly make habits of them.

The thing is -- cliché doesn't mean easy. Many clichés in both athletics and wealth building are very easy to understand on an intellectual level, but hard (for whatever reason) to put into practice for the required duration to reap the benefit. So there will always be a market for them to be remixed, repackaged, and expounded on ad infinitum[2], since the end results usually remain out of most people's grasp.

---

[1] I'm not saying all clichés are universal truths, just that many universal truths have at least one expression as a cliché

[2] I'm reminded of an exchange between two affiliate marketers on Twitter:

Aff-1: "It's 2015 and people still broke"

Aff-2: "It's 2015 and people still fat"

enraged_camel• 7 years ago

Is there any such “how to get rich” advice that IS actionable?

Literally all of it I’ve come across suffers from extreme selection bias, and does not account for (or give credit to) luck.

m463• 7 years ago

Except it's 37 ways, which is pretty overwhelming.

I sort of think the problem with self-help advice is you get satisfaction by reading about it, which is sort of a placebo for seeking the satisfaction of doing it.

That said, I kind of liked "6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person"

mikeschmatz2• 7 years ago

The right term is "entreporn" which what this article really is.

There’s no actual skill called business. Avoid business schools and magazines.

Proceeds giving a bunch of generic business and life lessons.

berberous• 7 years ago

I think he comes off better on this podcast than on twitter: https://medium.com/@gaurav1886/learnings-from-farnam-street-...

knowingathing• 7 years ago

This article is over 35,000 words and he is speaking from experience (he isn't a young kid).

ggregoire• 7 years ago

He was on the Joe Rogan Experience 2 days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44. He goes back on some of those tweets and talks about happiness, work, society, social networks, AI, robotics, energy…

darkmighty2• 7 years ago

- Earn as much as you can from your own work. Take a 2nd job, change to a higher paying job, ask for more responsibility and a raise at your current job, go back to school for a more lucrative degree, ...

I think that's a much better advice than any I found from a cursory read of the article; at least with my limited experience with friends. Most of my acquaitances doesn't seem sufficiently agressive with salaries -- they're mostly worried about having a job, a "good enough" pay, and that this job doesn't suck too much. That's ripe for exploitation -- if you don't actively demand and seek the best deal, you're going to be paid the minimum you can to just scrape by and definitely won't get wealthy. You don't have to own a business to be relatively wealthy (I'm taking 'wealthy' to be relative because the threshold for wealth is indeed much higher in developed countries).

Also I think being wealthy is completely beside the point; it doesn't make too much sense as an objective. The article tries to make the point for wealth being ethical; but in any case ethical are possible consequences not the accumulation of wealth. Health, general satisfaction (including from making ethical choices) are what really matter. That does necessitate some wealth, but in general any wealth threshold is not necessary nor sufficient for those prime goals.

Those two points may seem contradictory, but it's not because wealth is a non-necessary correlated variable that you should just leave it at the table. Get all you can from your employer without compromising on what matters (and hence obtaining the conveniences and securities of wealth while retaining life satisfaction).

I'm not going to venture into defining life satisfaction, but I do think it's good to ask yourself from time to time. For me it is having decent amounts of free time, being able to help people, having fun socially, producing beautiful/impactful work, etc. -- but it could include whatever you deeply enjoy.

sombremesa2• 7 years ago

An interesting counterpoint is that I've purposefully relinquished responsibility (read: stress) at my job and I'm paid less than I could be as a result. I've done this because I'd rather use my time and energy to work on my own business.

The abundance of contradictory points indicates that things aren't really cut and dry in any sense and this advice boils down to the same thing all advice boils down to: YMMV.

JamesBarney7• 7 years ago

Anyone one of his thousand claims could be an interesting article.

For instance "equity is a better way to get rich than working". Is it, I bet the average googler accumulates more wealth than the average start-up founder.

Or "how much start-up success is based off luck versus founder?"(from what I've read it's more luck, and if you include the birth luck such as intelligence, energy-levels, focus and health it would be almost all luck)

Or is capitalism natural? I'm not an anthropologist but it seems like a lot of early human communities were probably not run capitalistically.

He talks a lot about risk, but a interesting article would be how to reduce the risk of "product market-fit", "having the wrong skills in your startup", "choosing the right niche to develop "specific skills"

I think the most reproducible way to achieve freedom is develop a high paying skill and save your money. Or the most direct route is develop an in-demand skill and a low cost way of living just structure your life so you have freedom.

This guy seems like someone who has done very well and assumes that the cause is because of some system of how he made choices. If that's true he could put his money where his mouth is, teach this life skill, and everyone would be fabulously wealth. And since he believes that all you need is a functioning body and brain he could admin pretty much everyone.

warp_factor2• 7 years ago

For instance "equity is a better way to get rich than working". Is it, I bet the average googler accumulates more wealth than the average start-up founder.

His point more specifically is that if you want to scale above a certain point the only way to achieve it is to own equity of something successful.

your average startup guy doesn't own equity of anything really successful.

VRay2• 7 years ago

Or take a more gradual approach and aggressively save as much as possible, then retire 10-30 years early

tomhoward9• 7 years ago

I bet the average googler

The point is that the average person is not the average Googler.

His philosophies are intended for people who aren't lucky enough to be a Googler, or to inherit wealth, etc.

JamesBarney7• 7 years ago

Getting a job at Google is way easier than starting a large successful software company.

nostrademons2• 7 years ago

I made a lot more money at Google than from various startups I've worked at or founded.

I made a lot more money from equity I got while working at Google than I did in salary. The ratio when I started working at Google was about 3:1:2 salary:bonus:equity; the ratio as it stands 10 years later, after a 7:1 appreciation in the stock price, was about 3:1:20.

This is not inconsistent with "equity is a better way to get rich than working".

vl• 7 years ago

This is the exception though, you caught the end of the tail. People joining Google now are not going to experience this. Moreover to be in the situation you described even in the given time frame one had to be fortunate to be on the "right" projects.

darth_skywalker• 7 years ago

> But then of course Uncle Sam show up, and basically say, “Hey, you know what, you just made a lot money this year. Therefore, you’re rich. Therefore, you’re evil and you’ve got to hand it all over to us.”

The government doesn't tax rich people because they're evil - they tax rich people to provide food, education, and security for society. Progressive taxes are useful because they help fight poverty and allow the very poor to participate in the market (extreme inequality and the resulting poverty is regarded by most economists as a market failure).

This guy mentions the importance of education, but does he realize that K-12 education is payed for by taxes? Unfortunately, inter-generational wealth mobility in the US is quite low, much lower than in most of Europe, where taxes happen to be much more progressive. You could argue that progressive taxes lead to wealth mobility; they provide the funding for education and other services that give poor folks the means to acquire wealth.

TAForObvReasons• 7 years ago

K-12 education is payed for by taxes

Many wealthy families send their children to private schools. Even though some states have "school choice" programs that let the budgeted amount from taxes go to the schools, the families still pay the bulk of the price.

We don't know the poster's history, but it's entirely possible he attended private schools his entire life and was blissfully unaware of how the rest of us were educated.

frankbreetz• 7 years ago

I doubt there is any person in America who is so out of touch he doesn't know about public schools.

klipklop• 7 years ago

From the sound of it, he didn't grow up rich at all: "I was a latchkey kid. My mom was working multiple jobs and then she was going to school at night. We were raised by a single mother, my brother and I were, in New York City. We were in a part of New York City that isn’t very safe."

curo• 7 years ago

inter-generational wealth mobility in the US is quite low, much lower than in most of Europe

I was surprised by this so I looked up a few sources. Not saying it's not true but we must be looking at different sources, here's a chart on "intergenerational earnings elasticity and with only a couple European countries (Italy and UK) slightly above the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#/media/File:Th...

darpa_escapee• 7 years ago

You've read the figure incorrectly. Smaller values for Intergenerational Earnings Elasticity represent greater equality of opportunity[1] and correlate with less inequality.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/intergenerational-earnings-e...

the_gastropod• 7 years ago

I think you're misreading the graph. The Y axis is immobility. In other words, Italy and the UK have lower mobility than the US. Every other European country on the list has greater mobility.

lone_haxx0r• 7 years ago

Why do you assume that the only way for people to have food, education and security is through taxation?

Why do you assume that without taxes the system would devolve into poverty and extreme inequality?

The economy is not a linear equation with taxation and poverty as inversely related variables.

chillwaves• 7 years ago

We have seen what society looks like without a safety net provided by the government. That is the reason why these programs were created in the first place.

LordKano• 7 years ago

I am of the opinion that the government taxes rich people more because there are fewer of them and they are less likely to vote out the politicians who do it.

It's the masses voting bread and circuses for themselves.

Rich people only have the option of leaving but pretty much every place worth living does the same thing.

tempestn2• 7 years ago

I agree with you. Rather than arguing against progressive taxes in general, I think his point would have been stronger if it had explicitly argued for taxing wealth directly, rather than looking only at income. It's narrowly true that it doesn't make sense to tax someone far more for earning nothing in years 1-9 then $1M in year 10, vs someone earning 100k per year for 10 years. (Although in reality the person earning the lump sum would probably be able to spread that tax burden over multiple years using a corporate structure, etc. But still, the basic point holds.) The logical conclusion though is to look not just at annual income but at overall net worth when determining tax owed.

Of course, there are two major obstacles to that happening. First, income taxes are very convenient, because income is much easier to measure than net worth, and one would have to be careful with net worth taxes to make sure they don't have unintended consequences around illiquid wealth. Second, a lot of powerful rich people would be against it.

ZoomZoomZoom• 7 years ago

Progressive taxes are useful because they help fight poverty and allow the very poor to participate in the market (extreme inequality and the resulting poverty is regarded by most economists as a market failure).

That's what taxes are for, but I'm not so sure they have to be Progressive to allow for that.

komali22• 7 years ago

We are the only animals in the animal kingdom that cooperate across genetic boundaries. Most animals don’t even cooperate. But when they do, they cooperate only in packs where they co-evolve together, and they share blood, so they have some shared interests.
Humans don’t have that. I can cooperate with you guys. One of you is a Serbian. The other one is a Persian by origin. And I’m Indian by origin. We have very little blood in common, basically none. But we still cooperate.

That's... kinda weird. I mean, humans are also the only animals on the planet with language. Or like, the only ones that can associate abstract concepts with value (so trading shells for food, etc). We can teach some of this to other animals, but only for a single generation - none of them are "discovering" it on their own.

I don't buy that this is a argument for the "naturalism" of capitalism.

GVIrish• 7 years ago

We are the only animals in the animal kingdom that cooperate across genetic boundaries. Most animals don’t even cooperate. But when they do, they cooperate only in packs where they co-evolve together, and they share blood, so they have some shared interests.

I mean, this is outright wrong. There are many species that cooperate with other species for common goals. There's many symbiotic relationships, there's cases of cooperative hunting between species, there's interspecies friendships, the list goes on.

Humans may be better at collaboration but it is by no means an exclusive trait.

sombremesa2• 7 years ago

Correct, for example, many, many plants can't reproduce at all without certain insects to pollinate them - the survival of their species depends on an organism they share no 'blood' with.

sitdownyoungman• 7 years ago

I mean, humans are also the only animals on the planet with language.

orcas/other dolphins/whales want a word.

Or like, the only ones that can associate abstract concepts with value (so trading shells for food, etc).

i don't know about this...

https://www.zmescience.com/science/prostitution-animals/

temp129038• 7 years ago

I listened to the Rogan podcast and was definitely confused by some of the arguments he makes e.g. he claimed the celebrities are the "most miserable people in the world" because they get a disproportionate amount of hate directed toward them due to their status as public figures (or something). I don't believe that for a minute.

I was also a bit surprised by the discussion around questioning the truth behind climate change. Yes, we should be scientific about validating hypothesis about anything, but to nod along as Rogan said "there's no evidence" was a bit shocking.

codyb• 7 years ago

It’s certainly possible these miserable celebrities were miserable before they were celebrities.

It may be survival bias in that I remember what I hear and no one reports on the sober celebrity, but it seems like a very fair amount of our richest, most creative, and most lauded persons in this world have their fair share of mental and substance troubles.

n4r92• 7 years ago

I can easily believe that about celebrities. Wouldn't be at all surprised if the rate of mental health issues is much higher than average in celebrities.

anthonypasq• 7 years ago

probably more likely that only mentally ill people become celebrities.

normal people dont reach the .00001% of society

fallingfrog2• 7 years ago

In other words, own productive capital and live off the rent it generates. Personally I think such capital should be owned by the workers at a business so that they don’t have parasitic individuals like the author to support. It’s nice for you if you have a lot of wealth and don’t have to work, but the rest of us pay the price of that, and only a tiny slice of society can ever live that way, for obvious reasons.

mempko• 7 years ago

not sure why you are downvoted, good take.

somatic2• 7 years ago

All freedom is a relative proposition.

kjsbfkjbf4• 7 years ago

The "freedom" the article author is speaking of is the freedom to leech off the labour of others. I agree, it's disgusting. If you are willing and able there should be no free lunch -- and the rich are the ones who leech the most out of society.

Ironic that they criticize those who have worse outcomes for not working hard enough or focusing on the wrong things when it is those poor people who are working the hardest.

AnimalMuppet3• 7 years ago

Parasitic?

Here's an airline pilot. They're not being paid for the full value they produce, because some of it is going to pay of capital owners. And why should they receive some of the money? Because they put up the 70 million dollars to buy the airplane. The pilot didn't have that kind of money. And why does the plane cost that much? Because there are 150,000 people at Boeing who also want to be paid for the value that they produce.

You seem to want those with capital to invest it in companies for no return. That's... not likely to happen with the humans we have now. If you want the tools, and you or your company don't have the money to buy them yourself, then you have to make it worthwhile for the people who do have the money.

fallingfrog2• 7 years ago

I’m not going to dismiss this concern out of hand because I feel like it’s a good faith argument. But perhaps we can think a bit farther outside the box. Now, capital is always going to be required for economic activity to take place. Agreed. But I don’t think that whoever manages the allocation of capital needs to be compensated above and beyond what any other laborer doing an equivalently technical job needs to make. And they should be paid for the labor, not for the leverage they have as owners of capital.

How that is to be accomplished is.. complex. But that’s definitely the goal. But let’s not assume that we need some class of people who have the privilege of being the owners of capital.

closetCS2• 7 years ago

While I see the point of being financially independent and generating positive-sum wealth, some parts of this argument are bullshit. Most people I have talked to attacking those with lots of money do so because the money gained was made by depriving others of an opportunity to achieve their own wealth. I also disagree with his idea of a journalist reporting for the people being a "status game" and a "nessesscary evil" when he is attacking those who made money illicitly.

rmdashrfstar• 7 years ago

because the money gained was made by depriving others of an opportunity to achieve their own wealth

For example?

closetCS2• 7 years ago

Just how some criticize Bezos and Zucherburg for building massive fortunes with either terrible workplace practices or the invasion of privacy of millions of people. not all wealth was gained this way, some was gained through honest hard work, diligence, and prudence, but you also can't blame some for being overly cynical about whether most of those with great fortunes did so be committing great crimes.

RickJWagner• 7 years ago

"when journalists attack rich people, or attack the technology industry, they’re really bidding for status"

There's a lot of that going on these days.

wwweston4• 7 years ago

Yep. In fact, when rich technologists fire back with comments like his, they are also bidding for status.

(Or, more politely, engaging in a public conversation about values.)

JauntyHatAngle• 7 years ago

It's also an argument that reduces any valid criticism into tribalism.

It's a dangerous statement to make.

motohagiography• 7 years ago

Saw him for the first time today on Joe Rogan, I've never seen my own ways of thinking reflected so completely in one place.

I think he's wrong on the danger of AI, only because his case seems predicated on AI replicating a human mind and that ML is limited to tightly bounded problems - whereas it overlooks that causing extinction level events or facilitating global slavery are also bounded problems.

Looking forward to reading and hearing more from him.

NetOpWibby• 7 years ago

Nice, gonna watch his interview now.

b1daly• 7 years ago

I agree with a lot of his points, and I would do well to embrace them.

When he gets into diving people into “makers or takers” that’s an arrogant and ugly way to look at the world. Because “taker” has a perjorative element.

People are not one thing. Maybe I’m biased by living in the US but most people I know try to be a positive member of society, even if they lack wealth.

Perhaps you could apply the “taker” label to the severely disabled, or to pathological criminals. If ones criteria is net contribution to the worlds wealth.

nostrademons2• 7 years ago

"Maker" and "taker" are also technical terms from trading markets. The "maker" is the firm who puts a limit order into the order book and waits for someone to accept the trade; the "taker" is the firm who enters a market order (or a limit order that'll fill immediately) and accepts whatever the best bid is in the market.

Not sure if he meant it like that, since the following paragraph seem to go on to say that yes, he did mean "taker" in its pejorative sense. But there's an interesting analogy there: the maker sets the terms of trade, while the taker just offers their consent to the terms that are given. Similarly, in entrepreneurial markets, the "maker" is the one who determines what the world will look like, while the "taker" can merely offer their consent to one possible vision that is offered by an entrepreneur.

godzilla823• 7 years ago

He does define takers in the very next paragraph.

godzilla823• 7 years ago

Maybe you missed the part where he defines takers. Here's the part :

Then there are people who come along with a sword, or a gun, or taxes, or crony capitalism, or Communism, or what have you. There’s all these different methods to steal.

godzilla823• 7 years ago

I know its frowned upon to ask why you are being downvoted, but honestly I would like some feedback on why the comment is being downvoted. The commenter I was replying to, it seemed to me had missed the part and so was forming an opinion on what they think a "taker" is. In the article, you will find that he defines takers the very next paragraph after he uses the word takers. In the Joe Rogan podcast, infact he elaborates on this.

wwweston4• 7 years ago

When he gets into diving people into “makers or takers” that’s an arrogant and ugly way to look at the world.

Indeed. It's almost like a status game.

tempestn2• 7 years ago

I don't think he intended taker to mean someone who lacks wealth, but rather someone who exploits others to gain wealth, rather than participating in positive sum activities (making). IE, you could put various rent-seekers in here, some traders, and yes, criminals.

fzeroracer• 7 years ago

This article honestly read like something out of a bullshit self-help book. There's a lot of tidbits in there that sort of ignore the reality for most people and how one small injury, accident etc can spiral out of control and bankrupt someone, at least in America. But reading this part especially stood out to me

We all know people who are consistently pessimistic, who will shoot down everything. Everyone in their life has the helpful critical guy, right? He thinks he’s being helpful, but he’s actually being critical, and he’s a downer on everything.
That person will not only never do anything great in their lives, they’ll prevent other people around them from doing something great. They think their job is to shoot holes in things. And it’s okay to shoot holes in things as long as you come up with a solution.

This is silicon valley in a nutshell. Silicon valley needs more pessimists, people that understand the problems with all the nonsense they push in attempt to solve problems while exploiting people along the way. It needs people that are willing to question people and tell them to stop doing things that are fucked up. Because these companies don't think about what will happen if they fuck up and break things.

gowld3• 7 years ago

Usually when they break things they break other people, for profit. So having a conscience doesn't help them.

imgabe• 7 years ago

No, we really don't need any more pessimists. That just results in nothing ever getting done.

It's easy to sit around and come up with hypothetical problems about anything. They may or may not become realities. We'll never know until we try something.

The right course is not to try and fix every possible conceivable problem before starting. This is impossible because there are infinitely many. The right thing is to start, do something, see what actually breaks, and then fix that.

wwweston4• 7 years ago

This article honestly read like something out of a bullshit self-help book.

There's a reason for that. That reason isn't that what he's telling you is largely bullshit, because much of it is true enough to be useful at a first approximation (although one could argue that some points aren't a fully articulated picture of reality -- in particular I'd assert he's mixed the concerns of status and values and that's going to make certain muddled conclusions easier).

It's that part of what he's doing here is in fact playing a version of the status games he defines, partly on a direct level (wealth creators are high status on by a certain measure of values, critics are just downers for competing values into the ring), partly on a meta level as the narrator who is telling this revealing story to an eager audience who, if they take this advice, will also almost certainly be successful because THIS is the mindset of SUCCESS and of course there is no survivorship bias.

It's pretty standard if quality work in that respect, which is why it has a ring of aspirational self-help.

One good response is to learn from what he's doing as well as carefully weighing the merits and limits of what he's directly saying.

Hasknewbie• 7 years ago

To me this part is particularly amusing, since one of the most successful and lauded CEO ever was that notoriously hyper-critical guy named Steve Jobs. Turns out people whose "job is to shoot holes in things" can do pretty well...

5440• 7 years ago

Is there a relationship between the timing of this post and the fact he was on the Joe Rogan show this week?

reducesuffering• 7 years ago

"I started as a poor kid in India, so if I can make it, anybody can, in that sense."

I agree with most of the advice and Naval's musing. But let's not pretend opportunity is mostly equal. He attended Stuyvesant [0], one of the highest acclaimed high school educations [1][2]. I'm sure that had a bit to do with how the rest panned out compared to just anyone.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AngelList [1] https://www.niche.com/k12/stuyvesant-high-school-new-york-ny... [1] https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Stuyvesant_High_School/

pawanrawal• 7 years ago

Also, started as a poor kid in India doesn't really present the whole picture. He was lucky that his family moved to New York when he was 9 which broadened the scope of opportunities he had.

From the Wiki article, "Ravikant moved to New York City with his family at the age of 9".

I still think what he has achieved is great and love some of what he shares but Naval can sometimes make things sound grander than they are.

dm3730• 7 years ago

Naval can sometimes make things sound grander than they are.

Please share a specific thing. Just curious.

Cthulhu_• 7 years ago

And moving to the US with your whole family is not a cheap or easy operation; it costs money, you need a job, a house, and from abroad, a working visa. I find it hard to believe he was a poor kid.

robocat• 7 years ago

Anyone that manages to pass the gauntlet of residency/green-card/naturalisation has shown some deluxe skills IMHO: almost by definition his parents are well above "normal" because they managed to win the game.

0x8BADF00D5• 7 years ago

He attended Stuyvesant [0], one of the highest acclaimed high school educations [1][2]. I'm sure that had a bit to do with how the rest panned out compared to just anyone.

It also doesn't guarantee that you will be successful in life. My closest childhood friend attended CMU full ride and was a CS major. I last saw him in my hometown disheveled and pushing a shopping cart around. What you do with what you are given is way more important than what school you went to, or even what country you were born in.

TheOtherHobbes3• 7 years ago

It's not a guarantee, but the right kind of schooling - in the educational sense, the networking sense, and the passing on of class-appropriate behaviours sense - hugely improves the odds of success.

As this article proves. The ability to invest disposable income is a defining class marker in the US.

You don't get to play the game if you literally have no surplus income - and many Americans don't.

mjfl2• 7 years ago

How much of his success is due to the high school he went to though? I think even given students with equal privilege, he is still within the top .1% of success. I'm not sure what would impress you though.

deepGem2• 7 years ago

From the same wiki article what I gather is that attending Stuy has nothing to do with economic status or money. It is very selective in a merit based admissions test and the tuition is free.

It is very plausible that he was a poor kid in India, parents put all their savings to immigrate to US, and by sheer hard work he got into Stuy. You can't rule out that possibility.

flavor8• 7 years ago

There's plenty of luck involved. He probably won some genetic lottery that contributed to his intelligence (genes = about 50% of intelligence). He (presumably, having only skimmed) also was lucky enough to have had a stable family life, managed to avoid major trauma as a child, and I can see from the rest of the thread also had a good education (environment = much of the rest of intelligence.)

Of course, he did apply himself and take initiative to get where he got. But, it's dangerous to work backwards from success stories and say "well, anybody could have really done what I did, ergo anybody who didn't is [....]"

That said, I wonder how many of the really driven entrepreneurs among us started from lower than middle rungs in society, and/or share the "immigrant mentality".

wwweston4• 7 years ago

There's a lot in this article that I'd endorse as a first-pass approximation of the truth for orienting oneself towards productive behaviors.

But...

There's a number of places where Naval is mixing the concerns of "status" and "values." This isn't an easy distinction to make, because status essentially exists by the standard of one form of values or another, but without this distinction you can gather both ideas like "all property should be owned/controlled by the state" or "taxation is theft" and "people should not be property" or "some regulation can balance problematic incentives" under the same umbrella of "status games", which makes certain muddled conclusions are easier (problematic or useful depending on how you look at it).

Once you understand this, though, it's easier to note that this piece is itself a bid in a status game -- it defines a set of values and sets them up as higher than a competing set of values. And the set of values he's advocating seems to be one by whose standards he would have a high status. ;)

This is distinct, by the way, from arguing that Naval is wrong (much less totally wrong). He is in some ways, not in others, and I hope that saying as much as I have makes the rest of that easier to work out as an exercise for the reader.

Though that will probably prove to be mostly be the case where it affirms the values a given reader already holds.

askafriend• 7 years ago

Once you understand this, though, it's easier to note that this piece is itself a bid in a status game -- it defines a set of values and sets them up as higher than a competing set of values. And the set of values he's advocating seems to be one by whose standards he would have a high status. ;)

This is such a great point, presented masterfully. It exposes the game in ways that the original article couldn't, while using the original article as a conduit to do so. Pretty cool. And you manage to do it without devaluing Naval's interpretation / world view - which I think we both agree does have value.

darawk2• 7 years ago

I like what I think you're trying to say...but:

Once you understand this, though, it's easier to note that this piece is itself a bid in a status game -- it defines a set of values and sets them up as higher than a competing set of values. And the set of values he's advocating seems to be one by whose standards he would have a high status. ;)

I don't think this is actually true. As far as I can tell, Naval isn't setting up any particular set of values as higher than any other. He's not saying that you should or must want wealth. He's speaking to you on the assumption that you share this value. I don't think he's trying to justify that value being better or higher than any other set of values.

awinder• 7 years ago

I felt like this got very close to what the parent was talking about:

  Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and 
  what you work on are more important than how hard you 
  work.

Realistically if the who + what is more important than the specific effort, I feel like the author is trending more into status/values because despite the relative importance, the last-place component of success there is the lede & focus here. I'd also contend that "work as hard as you can" is generally crappy advice, "work as hard as the situation demands" will leave you with more energy & the clarity that comes with understanding relative importance.

bubblewrap2• 7 years ago

He describes how to get wealthy, though. You can "eat" wealth (it means "how to generate something to eat", basically). You can't eat status.

Sure, he may be playing the status game in parallel - in a sense, everybody is, because everybody wants to be appreciated. But he is not asking people to suck up to him because of his high status.

challenger22• 7 years ago

The act of decomposing a piece based on the values of the artist and the values of other viewpoints ultimately leads to a spooky place where truth is defined by narrative. This is the domain of postmodernism.

I reconcile the narratives by: 1. Observing which set of values leads to the most effective goal-oriented behavior by individuals 2. Consider the most effective values to be true, in that they are the values most worth believing in because they actually stand the test of time and get results.

cryptica5• 7 years ago

> Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Everybody in the world can have a house.

This is false and the people who say this tend to be in elite circles so they don't see the scarcity which is obvious to everyone else.

The fact is that there aren't going to be enough builders to build houses for everyone. Why? Because those people are too busy building mansions, building yahts, building private jets, mining gold, making jewelry, mining diamond, working on useless rich people startups, etc... Rich people create scarcity through their consumption. Also rich people pay better for the same work.

And yes, investing in a useless startup is not real investing; it's consumption; the real purpose of most startups is to bring pleasure to a rich person and their friends when the startup gets acquired, not to serve society.

0x8BADF00D5• 7 years ago

And yes, investing in a useless startup is not real investing; it's consumption; the real purpose of most startups is to bring pleasure to a rich person and their friends when the startup gets acquired, not to serve society.

And yet it is the very same startups that have improved your standard of living exponentially where luxuries reserved for the rich like private chauffeur (Uber/Lyft), matchmaking (Tinder/OkCupid), and private island vacations (Airbnb) are accessible to normal people.

Wealth is not a zero-sum game. In fact, I can prove this to you right now. Go look at the consumer price index during the end of WW2 era up until the gold standard was abolished. Compare it to today's CPI. It's not the "rich" who are evil, it is central banking by fiat which is the real evil.

simonh• 7 years ago

You're kind of missing the point. The examples you give aren't useless. The vast majority are useless and die without achieving anything or are pointless financial engineering like ICOs.

cryptica5• 7 years ago

Except that I don't care about Uber, Tinder, or AirBnb. I would happily pay more for regular Taxi and regular Hotels if only I could afford what I really want; to live in my own house in a place I actually want to live in. Now because of the job market, I am forced to live to a big city where all the rich people have their toy startups and houses are too expensive.

As a software engineer, I'm just an entertainer for rich people. I wish they would just give me the money for free so that I could create real value working on my open source projects.

badpun• 7 years ago

standard of living exponentially where luxuries reserved for the rich like private chauffeur (Uber/Lyft), matchmaking (Tinder/OkCupid), and private island vacations (Airbnb) are accessible to normal people.

Uber is, from client's perpective, just a taxi service with ability to hails cabs through an app. Matchmaking services were available and cheap way before the Internet. As for private island vacations available for normal people via Airbnb - can you point me to one airbnb offer like that?

taneq• 7 years ago

You've redefined "house" to "mansion" in order to reach your conclusion. There are plenty of places in the world where people build their own houses and live in them quite happily.

A farmer builds up a flock of sheep or a herd of cows, and everyone in the village is richer. A miller builds a water mill and everyone in the village gets bread. A blacksmith builds a forge and everyone in the village now has access to metal items.

Wealth is not a zero-sum game.

Integer• 7 years ago

> This is false and the people who say this tend to be in elite circles so they don't see the scarcity which is obvious to everyone else.

There are countries with an over 90% home ownership rate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...

cryptica5• 7 years ago

> It’s somewhat true in that, in a lot of the world, there’s a lot of theft going on all the time.

Also there are two kinds of stealing; the obvious one which everybody knows about and the non-obvious where even the person committing the offence doesn't realize it because society itself hasn't caught up to the fact that it is in fact stealing.

In my definition, any activity which takes value (or opportunity) from someone deserving and gives it to someone less deserving is stealing. This happens every day in every office, every industry and impacts everyone to different extents. We are a society of theives. If most money is derived from stealing, then it must be mostly evil.

It's no coincidence that Bitcoin is so valuable, even drug money is less dirty than fiat these days.

inertiatic• 7 years ago

This is one of the most absurd pieces of writing I've ever read and I'm only half way through.

I had to check again and see whether there was some sanity in the comments before continuing through it.

Then there are people who come along with a sword, or a gun, or taxes, or crony capitalism, or Communism, or what have you. There’s all these different methods to steal.

What a gem. Taxes, guns, both about the same. Your "wealth" was obviously created in a vacuum, society contributed nothing to it.

Overall capitalism [meaning free markets] is intrinsic to the human species. Capitalism is not something we invented. Capitalism is not even something we discovered. It is in us in every exchange that we have.

And this makes it more clear that this is about some form of religion.

I started as a poor kid in India, so if I can make it, anybody can, in that sense.

Wish I could find an expression to accurate capture this sentiment...

Now, obviously, I had all my limbs and I had my mental faculties and I did have an education. There are some prerequisites you can’t get past. But if you’re listening to this video or podcast, you probably have the requisite means at your disposal, which is a functioning body and a functioning mind.

Casually insulting people missing a limb, those obviously wouldn't be listening to a podcast about making it anyway, right? Those guys are f*ed.

If you’re a trusted, reliable, high-integrity, long-term thinking deal maker, then when other people want to do deals but they don’t know how to do them in a trustworthy manner with strangers, they will literally approach you and give you a cut of the deal or offer you a unique deal just because of the integrity and reputation that you have built up.

In the words of Mark Wahlberg spoken in The Other Guys: "Oh my god, you were a pimp".

Warren Buffett, he gets offered deals, and he gets to buy companies, and he gets to buy warrants, and bailout banks and do things that other people can’t do because of his reputation.

Yes. The main reason I'm not asked to bail out banks is I don't have the reputation for it. The process is obviously: -"Who could help us bail out a dying bank and make billions in the process?" -"I think I know a guy who's trustworthy, Warren I think is his name." -"Are there any prerequisites to offering him the opportunity to help?" -"I don't think so Jim. It would help if he had some cash on hand but we'll figure things out if he doesn't!".

xapata• 7 years ago

Free markets are intrinsic to the human species

An anthropologist would disagree. Counter-examples are numerous. Ironically, individuals inside a corporation don't interact with each other via free market behavior. Friends, family, etc. Whole societies back in the day.

Reedx2• 7 years ago

He actually made that point on Rogan's podcast, referencing Nassim Taleb:

"I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist."

TheOtherHobbes3• 7 years ago

Unfortunately that's self-serving nonsense. You're either context-aware or you're not. If you're trying to cherry pick the levels at which you're context-aware, it means you're not context-aware at all.

The more complex social contexts don't stop operating just because you don't believe in them.

elcomet• 7 years ago

Wow, I just discovered I'm rich according to his definition.

The reason you want wealth is because it buys you your freedom. So, you don’t have to wear a tie like a collar around your neck. So, you don’t have to wake up at 7:00 AM, and rush to work, and sit in commute traffic. So, you don’t have to waste away your entire life grinding all your productive hours away into a soulless job that doesn’t fulfill you.

I'm working as a researcher (pursuing a PhD), and this is exactly how I'm seeing my life currently. So I'm glad to learn I'm already rich, even if my salary is quite low!

onion2k2• 7 years ago

To be honest, that just sounds like he's repeating what more than 2000 years of stoic philosophers have been telling us. Epictetus said "Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” in about 100AD.

bubblewrap2• 7 years ago

You are getting money from somewhere, though, and presumably, if you don't make progress on your PhD, that source will eventually dry up. Likewise, once you have finished your PhD.

drjesusphd• 7 years ago

My thoughts exactly. I used to have a relatively high paying rock-stable job that enabled me to plan for an early retirement.

Then I made the "mistake" of thinking about what I would do after said retirement. Then thought, why not do that now, when Im still young? So off to grad school I went.

tlrobinson• 7 years ago

See also pg's essay "How to Make Wealth" (2004): http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

csomar• 7 years ago

We are the only animals in the animal kingdom that cooperate across genetic boundaries. Most animals don’t even cooperate. But when they do, they cooperate only in packs where they co-evolve together, and they share blood, so they have some shared interests.

Pretty certain that lots of animals co-operate. Dogs and Cats are two examples. Dogs will "take care" of your babies. (not changing diapers but primitive protection).

I thought humans used horses but it is more complicated than that when I visited a farmer. He does have a genuine relation with his horses and without co-operation the horse will throw you out of his back.

Still he is comparing different species to different races of the same specie. Not quite a fair game.

EliRivers• 7 years ago

Pretty certain that lots of animals co-operate.

Oh yes, lots. Here are some really interesting ones betweens species.

https://listverse.com/2015/02/23/10-amazing-cooperations-bet...

There are many more.

As for cooperation "across genetic boundaries" within a species, I can think of lots without even having to search. Vampire bats sharing blood with unlucky fellow bats who didn't find anything comes to mind.

It seems that almost every time someone (often someone trying to make a point about human exceptionalism without having bothered to actually check if they're talking nonsense) makes a statement that "humans are the only creature to exhibit behaviour X", a counter-example is only a websearch away. I've come to strongly suspect that there isn't any special or unique quality humans have that no other species does; we differ only on the scale of some of them and perhaps got lucky with a few physical characteristics that lent themselves to additional uses (although that's very speculative; we built ourselves a society and a way of life perfectly suited for our shape and characteristics, so of course that shape and characteristics look really helpful).

kjsbfkjbf4• 7 years ago

Almost invariably capitalists try to define capitalism as being intrinsic to "human nature" or "society", and are always wrong. If you read the higher upvoted comments -- that statement is believed and taken at face value.

If you have to take the time to defend that your accumulation of material wealth is ethical when there are millions of people dying from a lack of resources... I don't know what to say. I just hope HN grows to stop believing the obvious lies.

mlang23• 7 years ago

Interesting. Small world. It is just a few hours ago that I listened to Naval @ JRE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44

vinceguidry• 7 years ago

The title gives a connotation about the article's contents that is not actually present in the article. While the article works just fine at giving the broad strokes for how to acquire wealth, it makes no effort at providing direction for how one might do it in a riskless fashion. Invariably any attempt to get rich must interact with free markets, and while there are ways to de-risk financial activity, you must be rich already to employ them.

mikeschmatz2• 7 years ago

What do you think society would look like in 20 years? My guess is what would happen is we would build robots, machines, software and hardware to do everything. We would all be living in massive abundance.
We would essentially be retired, in the sense that none of us would have to work for any of the basics. We’d even have robotic nurses. We’d have machine driven hospitals. We’d have self-driving cars. We’d have farms that are 100% automated. We’d have clean energy.

Do we really need to run a thought experiment? Haven't some of it already happened to see the results? Doesn't look that rosy as this guy is describing.

cryptica5• 7 years ago

> Today, I would rather be a poor person in a First World country, than be a rich person in Louis the XIV’s France.

This is bullshit and demonstrates a lack of empathy. A poor person today has no spare time at all to enjoy life. Also, the modern medical system in many developed countries is not much better at all than a few centuries ago if you're poor... The only difference is that now the poor person knows ahead of time that they're going to die of cancer because they can't afford treatment... I don't think that's a good thing.

spopejoy• 7 years ago

Agreed. I'm always surprised when people get away with this kind of blinkered panglossian pap.

There is simply no evidence that as a species we're happier, more secure, etc than generations past. Every advance we enjoy seems to come with a trade-off, as evidenced by the new findings about loneliness/alienation, rich-poor inequality, environmental degradation, what have you.

Even the elephant graph stuff can only talk about a time period that starts centuries after a huge amount of the world came under the yoke of colonialism.

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