61–70 of 164 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. As a HF mentor used to tell me - Wealth buys optionality. Variance is the outcome.
I agree wealth buys optionality, but regarding variance wouldn't that imply wealthy people have better and worse outcomes than nonwealthy people, who would have consistently middling outcomes? That doesn't really match my observations.
On the one hand, sure, status probably is a trap and won't bring "true happiness." And I think this is well meaning advice. But on the other hand, I think it's possible that an Ivy League educated founder/VC partner/executive coach might not be in the best position to see the whole picture. To paraphrase the Aviator[1], you don't care about status because you've always had it. I think that for many people who have ex…
>I think that pursuit of status is a rational way to increase security. I agree, I would recommend increasing security as the priority, not status. Status doesn't pay the bills necessarily when the recessions hit, security does. If you can get security without status, that's better than status without security.
As a personal exercise I find it useful to trace my behavior to end goals (and back the other way), and then disregard false goals/traps while problem solving other obstacles.
I suspect the common real goal on the other side of status from one’s behavior is to be loved. All humans share this goal with widely varying strategies, and some of those strategies expose the individual to the status trap. The most effective means to overcome this trap is to accomplish the real goal, and in the case of being loved one convenient solution is to appreciate the people in our lives, from acquaintances to close family. From appreciation comes kindness and openness, and from there we experience love and feelings of belonging. Status then becomes either irrelevant, or a tool one can now effectively wield.
When you look at individuals who have achieved things you admire, it's so often true that they themselves came from outside the status system that existed at that time. They now sit within, or atop the current one, but it's often something they themselves have created to a greater or lesser degree. There's a huge lesson there, I think. Being in that position in the current status system is not and never was their goa…
The concept of "ʿasabiyyah" (Arabic: "tribalism, clanism, communitarism", or in a modern context, "group feeling" , "social cohesion", "solidarity" or even "nationalism") is one of the best known aspects of the Muqaddimah. As this ʿasabiyyah declines, another more compelling ʿasabiyyah may take its place; thus, civilizations rise and fall, and history describes these cycles of ʿasabiyyah as they play out.
Ibn Khaldun argues that each dynasty has within itself the seeds of its own downfall. He explains that ruling houses tend to emerge on the peripheries of great empires and use the unity presented by those areas to their advantage in order to bring about a change in leadership. As the new rulers establish themselves at the center of their empire, they become increasingly lax and more concerned with maintaining their lifestyles. Thus, a new dynasty can emerge at the periphery of their control and effect a change in leadership, beginning the cycle anew.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah
From studying history a bit, I do agree that it's striking how often new powerful civilizations are formed from groups of people that existed on the periphery and had very little institutional power a generation or two beforehand. The Mongols, the Ottomans, and Napoleonic France are just a few examples.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree wealth buys optionality, but regarding variance wouldn't that imply wealthy people have better and worse outcomes than nonwealthy people, who would have consistently middling outcomes? That doesn't really match my observations.
wealthy people don't talk about the massive losses, only their massive gains.
Not really something I'm interested in having an extensive debate about though. The reason I asked is I suspect the metaphor means something different from how I've interpreted it.
My inner ring trap is retirement. I can’t wait to get there.
Until you go golfing one time, and are like omg wtf how do people retire, because I’m bored? I say that because that’s what many i know have realized once they (we) didn’t have to work. I suspect the personality of engineering types likes puzzle solving, and is inclined to find some class of puzzles to “work” on.
When you look at individuals who have achieved things you admire, it's so often true that they themselves came from outside the status system that existed at that time. They now sit within, or atop the current one, but it's often something they themselves have created to a greater or lesser degree. There's a huge lesson there, I think. Being in that position in the current status system is not and never was their goa…
But within the world of VC-backed tech companies, I do think “traditional” status markers are still very influential, and that when you dig into the About pages, the majority of founders/investors/current-high-status individuals come from high status backgrounds.
A Yale degree is not the end-all be-all, and “Ex-Google” is not a magic key. But I do think it’s important to acknowledge that a lot of people in tech (myself included!) benefit from very, very privileged backgrounds.
> I experienced this myself when running my first company. We had been bootstrapping for a year when a competitor entered the space and raised $10 million. This brought up a lot of insecurity....Comparing myself to them, I felt like an outsider—like we were missing something or approaching the business wrong. I can see how status would be at play here, but if I were a founder whose market had just been crashed by a c…
> I'd be concerned that having a well-funded competitor would make life much harder. That's certainly true for things that you can buy with a lot of money, such as marketing. On the other hand, having such a competitor forces you to think really hard about how to help customers and what makes your company different.
Kind of like sports, where maybe both teams play really well, but only one is going to win. But at least that's just entertainment at the end of the day.