There may be some conflation of value creation with value extraction, they are not the same thing. Capitalism is a hell of a drug and can warp the mind. Some pe

There may be some conflation of value creation with value extraction, they are not the same thing. Capitalism is a hell of a drug and can warp the mind. Some people can get very rich by running scams -- convincing other people to make bad decisions and taking their money -- but is that the person you want to be? SPACs in this time of cheap cash & extreme investor credulity... Ethics aside, you cannot judge the quality of a decision by the result -- when judging the quality of the decision you need to tease apart the contribution of skill, and the contribution of luck. Some people can get very rich by making bad decisions, taking a huge amount of risk, and getting lucky. Philosophy offers some consolation: > Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance. > one cannot consider a profession without taking into account the average of the people who enter it, not the sample of those who have succeeded in it. > Clearly, the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome, but such a point seems to be voiced only by people who fail. > The reader can see my unusual notion of alternative accounting: $ 10 million earned through Russian roulette does not have the same value as $ 10 million earned through the diligent and artful practice of dentistry. They are the same, can buy the same goods, except that one’s dependence on randomness is greater than the other. From Taleb's book fooled by randomness. -- https://www.nateliason.com/notes/fooled-randomness-nassim-nicholas-taleb https://www.nateliason.com/notes/fooled-randomness-nassim-ni...