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PG strongly implies that wealth can be created by anyone with enough drive and determination. Put another way, if you are not creating and amassing wealth, it's
by giaour 11y ago
PG strongly implies that wealth can be created by anyone with enough drive and determination. Put another way, if you are not creating and amassing wealth, it's because you don't want it hard enough. To quote from his essay:
"Most people who get rich tend to be fairly driven. Whatever their other flaws, laziness is usually not one of them. Suppose new policies make it hard to make a fortune in finance. Does it seem plausible that the people who currently go into finance to make their fortunes will continue to do so but be content to work for ordinary salaries? The reason they go into finance is not because they love finance but because they want to get rich. If the only way left to get rich is to start startups, they'll start startups. They'll do well at it too, because determination is the main factor in the success of a startup."
- mattmcknight 11y agoNo, it doesn't imply that at all. It doesn't say anything about the people that aren't creating and amassing wealth. It simply says, of the people that are getting rich, most of them are driven. The thing you could get away with saying it implies is that you could have all of the other positive attributes and opportunities of those people, but not be driven and fail. It doesn't say anything the people without the opportunity or positive attributes to get rich, because being driven is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency ] From the perspective of that quote, the people getting rich in finance that would be switching into startups already have the combination of sufficient positive attributes and opportunities, including the necessary condition of drive/determination. If they lacked those things, they wouldn't be in that group of people that would have gotten rich in startups.
- giaour 11y agoPG points out that being driven is not a necessary condition for being rich: "there are a lot of people who get rich through rent-seeking of various forms, and a lot who get rich by playing games that though not crooked are zero-sum." Since the skills necessary to succeed in finance are distinctly different from those necessary to succeed as a startup founder, I assumed that the essay was attributing success to the one attribute it specifically calls out: determination.