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How to Be Successful

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: How to Be Successful

#301

Post by Suncho »

ams6110 wrote: post #115
alphagrep12345 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't basic universal income give rise to more inflation and negate the benefits in the first place?

Depends where it comes from. If it's just printed by the government, yes. If it's taxed and redistributed then in theory no, but accounting for all the incentives that taxes create on both sides of the transaction is tricky and the result in most cases is "unintended consequences."

The idea that a tax will prevent inflation is an intuition that a lot of people have, but it's not correct. If your basic income is going to cause inflation, then a tax is not going to help. What matters is the level of consumer spending and the level of production that the consumer spending is chasing.

If you're curious, I've written a few blog posts about this:

http://www.greshm.org/blog/tax-revenue-is-meaningless/

http://www.greshm.org/blog/the-wrong-thing-to-tax-is-money/

http://www.greshm.org/blog/theres-only-one-way-to-pay-for-a-...

Re: How to Be Successful

#302

Post by Suncho »

tanilama wrote: post #89
sama wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason I'm excited about basic income is the amount of human potential it will unleash by freeing more people to take risks. Until then, if you aren't born lucky, you have to claw your way up for awhile before you can take big swings. If you are born in extreme poverty, then this is super difficult :( It is obviously an incredible shame and waste that opportunity is so unevenly distributed. But I've witne…

It is unlikely UBI will enable average person to go to an elite school, because by definition elite implies scarcity.

Yup. But there's no reason why we can't provide everyone the level of education that today can only be attained through an elite school.

Re: How to Be Successful

#303

Post by Suncho »

sama wrote: post #34
aphextron wrote: post #11

1. Be born to a wealthy middle class family and go to an elite school.

The biggest reason I'm excited about basic income is the amount of human potential it will unleash by freeing more people to take risks. Until then, if you aren't born lucky, you have to claw your way up for awhile before you can take big swings. If you are born in extreme poverty, then this is super difficult :( It is obviously an incredible shame and waste that opportunity is so unevenly distributed. But I've witne…

This is right. I'd just add that we're currently forcing most people to spend their time in ways that do not contribute to society.

By giving people the freedom to spend their time how they choose, they'll at least have the option of doing something useful.

We can probably do even better than that, but basic income can at least help us clear this low bar.

Re: How to Be Successful

#304

Post by zimpenfish »

sametmax wrote: post #295
zimpenfish wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have two brothers who occasionally get very angry, cut off relationships on whims and sabotage themselves through acts of defiance and misplaced protest, and neither of them is very 'successful' On the other hand, becoming the POTUS is presumed to be the definition of "successful" (cf some comments on here yesterday) and Trump is all of those ^ things and more.

It's hard to be sure if he is that way, or if he plays the role because he learned that it gives him an advantage at this point.

I think the preceding 50 years of him in the public eye gives us a pretty good handle on who he is as a person. I would venture he's not playing a role.

Re: How to Be Successful

#305

Post by joehan »

spyckie2 wrote: post #191
porpoisely wrote: post #92

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…

I'm from the US but currently living in Asia. I observe that in many places outside the US, the cultural context of many stories, themes, and values is scarcity, whereas in the US it is opportunity. For example, in many Asian novels, power, wealth and opportunity is seen as an often vicious 0 sum game. Clans only have enough resources to put into 1 person. The throne of the kingdom only has enough space for 1 king, a…

I grew up in Asia and currently living in US. I had never thought of it that way, so I will need more time to connect the dots with this particular view point.

Re: How to Be Successful

#306

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

jlawson wrote: post #245
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you say, these stunted people already exist. They already do everything in their power to minimize their work time, including trying for disability or welfare. UBI won't create more of them, and it won't end the ones we have, but it may add stability to the working poor.

The modern welfare state (post-1930) did create a huge number of these stunted people. UBI will create many more, and it'll be a generational compounding effect, as the stunting increases through generations and we develop familities where no ancestor has worked for 3+ generations. Just reflect for a moment on how many of such stunted people existed in 1925, compared to today. Now apply that difference again a few mo…

If there were no stunted people, why did the welfare state get created? And do you have any evidence of this increase, or did it just codify the problem that already existed?

Re: How to Be Successful

#307

Post by lkbm »

distant_hat wrote: post #70

All such articles should be preceded by huge blink tags with 'Warning: survivorship bias ahead'.

This isn't an article about how sama was successful. It's an articler about traits sama--a person who spends most of his time observing people succeed or fail at business--has observed more common in people successful at business.

He's in a much better position than most any of us to avoid survivorship bias in this. I see people once their business succeeds. He's there observing people early on, so he gets to witness both the successes and the failures.

Re: How to Be Successful

#308

Post by graeme »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #109
telesilla wrote: post #10

It's also very successful, if you have built a stable business and a way of supporting yourself and a few others around you. Being successful doesn't always mean having a 1BN valuation. But sure, it's nice to think that one day, it could happen. I'm just grateful every day that what I've got now - stability and plenty of resources - was a result of pretty much what Sam said. Believing in ourselves and not giving up,…

As a force multiplier have a stable business that supports you but doesn't take all of your time can be huge. It allows you to take risks that others won't. That said, there is something to having risks be actual risks. A friend of mine who has been much more successful than I have decided to take out a huge second mortgage on his house to start his own business (at the time it was an ISP and he spent nearly all of t…

This motivation is real. I never worked harder than in the first 3 years of my bootstrapped business, when finance was precarious.

I didn't face any big financial loss, I had no mortgage, debt or capital requirements in the business. Just my own living expenses.

But I really, really, really didn't want to fail. That would mean moving back in with my parents and getting a job.

It really worked. If I had had enough money that I could have been in modest comfort indefinitely, I don't think I would have gotten off the ground.

I see a lot of people who would like to start a business. And they make some efforts here and there. But they have a decently comfy life, and they don't seem to have that drive that motivates you through the tedium, the tiny initial results, the lag between effort and something tangible. I consider it a virtual guarantee of failure.

Re: How to Be Successful

#309

Post by graeme »

throwaway000021 wrote: post #21

I'm not successful, but my strategy for getting there is specific.... -- never put yourself in the position to go bankrupt -- stay in the game - keep your overheads down to the minimum practical for you -- learn to program so you can implement your own ideas without need for a cofounder or need to pay for anything more than hosting and a domain -- just keep banging out your ideas into products until one catches on. -…

> just keep banging out your ideas into products until one catches on

Good list in general. But identifying a market and seeking to serve it is a better recipe.

You still want to get stuff out there and test it rapidly. But having some idea as to whether a product will be useful is a good idea.

Re: How to Be Successful

#310

Post by jjn2009 »

benohear wrote: post #270

The bit I struggle with is the contradiction between "try ideas out cheaply and fail many times until you hit on the right one" and "believe in what you do and keep going come what may". How do you pick between the two?

Measuable growth. If something is working it will be self evident if youre looking in the right places. The airbnb way is probably nonoptimal.
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