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I've come to the conclusion that there are two essential commodities in any society. One is Property-- land, financial capital, social connections, reputation.

I've come to the conclusion that there are two essential commodities in any society. One is Property-- land, financial capital, social connections, reputation. The other is Energy-- talent, ambition, willingness to work hard, vision. Most social and class tensions are centered on the exchange rate between these two, which has historically favored Property except in times of crisis. The reason societies have typically been pro-Property comes from religious superstition; consider that the concept of private land ownership emerged out of a perversion of ancestor veneration; "<dead chieftain> will rape your shit for breakfast in the afterlife if you don't honor his descendant's claim to this land". Eventually, these ancestors became legends or gods and those who claimed ancestry became the priests, and the rest (literally) is history. [Note: I'm not saying that all religion was born this way, but only that the desire to corrupt or abuse the religious impulse is as old as dirt.] If you take a person's percentile-ranking on Property vs. Energy and compare the two, it determines what that person's politics will be-- not in a left/right sense, but in terms of how they view certain social justice questions. People who are Property-heavy (i.e. have a lot of connections and capital but low talent) tend to resist change and want to keep doors closed. People who have more Energy than Property want to shatter barriers and dynamite the doors keeping them out. The reason it doesn't map easily to left/right politics is that both corporations and government can be corrupted to protect the entrenched (i.e. undeserving, Property-heavy people) so there are a lot of pro-Property types who are superficially liberal. Most HN-types and entrepreneurs, even the libertarians, tend to be pro-Energy. A source of our continuing frustration is that the world is still run (look at who actually makes major funding decisions, a few top incubators aside) by extremely connected people who have lots of Proprety and little Energy/talent. There's another way to view this, which is more fundamental and equally correct. Property equals Past. Energy equals Future. Sadly, people tend to have more faith in an established (but rapidly becoming irrelevant) past than in an uncertain future.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Your analysis prompts a bunch of knee-jerk reactions from me which I'm going to attempt to squelch. :) First, property as a result of superstition? Really? This is the first I've ever heard of this. In fact, most primitive societies have no concept of property -- this is why they are primitive. "Culture Cult" does a great job expanding on this argument. Second, a dichotomy between energy and property? Really? So you can't be somebody who has a lot of energy and wants to smash doors down and also somebody who likes to own stuff? Sounds like a conclusion you'd draw from various discussions on MPAA and BitTorrent, but not one that would work for much besides that. Let's say it's fifty thousand years ago and I live in the forest with my clan. I take a flint and make a wood carving. At this point I own nothing -- so if it's nice, the alpha male or one of his females takes it from me. So I stop making carvings. Somewhere down the line, at least in Western Civilization, I make the same carving and get to keep it. This is the beginning of civilization, the basis for all progress: both the naming of property as the product of somebody's energy and the common belief that they get to keep it. Property is stored energy (in your terms). Once it's stored we can trade it or pass it around without having to expend energy again. So progress begins to accumulate. Energy can either create property or not. Of course I can't keep everything I make; the clan needs extra arrowheads or whatever in order to fight off another clan. So I share -- or I'm taxed. However you put it, I give up some of my property, some of my "stored energy" in order to benefit the greater good. There is a tension here, and it's a good tension. Where you come down on most political issues boils down to whether you're a "sharer" or a "creator/trader" You can be both, of course, but your answer to this tension defines your sensibilities. Not some kind of energy/property thing. I love ad-hoc analysis. Your comment strikes me as an informed comment of somebody who has kind of floated along in the various property discussions we tech heads have without taking much time at all to dive deeper (apologies if that sounds condescending.) Might want to up your game a bit. Using your terms, energy without persistent property is a fool's game. Yes, you can trade MP3 tunes all day on the net and it doesn't hurt the economy much. You can participate in the FOSS movement, providing somebody else a bigger piece of property down the road for less effort -- a great cause indeed. But the reason you can act in such an idealized manner is that you're resting on other more fundamental principles of property. They don't come and take your house or computer any more, and the things you create you get to either choose to share or not. Because we rest so solidly on the foundations of property, we begin to forget they are there. Seriously, this property rights equals don't-change-things and religious superstition is way whacked.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  "Property" is quirky word, and I now wish I could think of a better word to represent what I'm talking about, because the points you've raised are valid. Property rights are a great thing in moderation. There's a social need for people to have the right to own the products of their own labor. Where property becomes a systemic disease when property relations persist for longer (and allowing larger concentrations than are reasonable) than serve any purpose. If a person who works hard gets rich, great. If his moronic, undeserving, spoiled great-grandchildren are rich and powerful and still call the shots in society, not great. There needs to be a way of storing Energy, as you said, but it needs to be limited and kept reasonable. Infinite transferability of property rights is a demonstrated disaster. For example, private land ownership (at scale, in non-agrarian settings) is pretty much illegitimate. I'm not saying that it's illegitimate for a person to own a small house in the woods on an acre of land. That's fine. I'm talking about what happens at scale. Private land ownership was necessary at one time because it gave people an incentive to use the land properly, but the senseless wealth transfer we see in, e.g., Manhattan is just perverse. People like me (hard-working, ambitious, energetic, talented) are the fucking reason people want to live (or work, or employ people) here... we fucking make cities... and yet, instead of thanks for making this place great, we get the obligation to pay immense sums of money in rent. I would actually support a government solution to the urban land problem. Since the total price is going to be high anyway (because of the high demand for housing) I'd rather see it go into taxes that make the place better-- better schools, more and nicer parks-- than into the already bloated coffers of multimillionaire real estate owners. The religion aspect: private land ownership pretty much emerged out of ancestor veneration. Land "ownership" started at the ability to defend land, which was usually the job of the chieftain or king or alpha male. However, being people, they died. If their descendants weren't strong or persuasive or wily enough to defend the land claim through ordinary means, they started using supernatural claims, based on the idea that the ancestor still existed and could enforce those claims supernaturally. (Over generations, these ancestors became gods.) This was almost certainly not the only religious impulse, and it's far from true that all religion was borne of this desire, but it's a strong and consistent strain of the impulse to corrupt religion toward political aims.
  - 14y ago
einhverfr 14y ago
Way back in the day, Cicero wrote Des Republica, which is really belongs with Aristotle's Politics on the bookshelf. Cicero argues that being pro-property (and anti-theft) is simply necessary for people to live together in cities. People can't live together in cities if the means they use to make a living can be taken by their neighbors and they have no recourse. That's a pretty good point, and it means that non-urban societies might have other arrangements but cities require property rights. So no, I don't think it's religious superstition. Secondly I think that there are several essential commodities. These are land (where to have your office, or for production of food, etc), capital, tools, and labor. The first three we can group together as "means of production." The fundamental question that has been so much in dispute since the days of Karl Marx is how we want to address means of production. Capitalism has the means of production owned by the wealthy, who then hire labor. Laborers, deprived of their means of production, are dependent on jobs which, if they are lucky, the capitalists will give them, The concentration of the means of production in the hands of the wealthy capitalists disempowers workers. Communism attempts to solve this problem by taking the means of production from the capitalists and placing them in the hands of the state which, in theory, represents the workers. In practice, however, this creates a more powerful state, and the workers are even more disempowered. In essence you can't solve the problem of big businesses having too much control over the economy by centralizing that control further in the state. Distributism (think of this in terms of distributed computing) seems instead to distribute access to the means of production to the individual laborers. Worker owned and operated cooperatives, such as Mondragon, are economically distributist systems. Bossless corporations (WL Gore, Valve, GitHub) are distributist workplaces. Open Source is a distributist way of going about developing software. In this model the worker has a chance to own all the means of production needed to start a business sufficient to feed his or her family. If the worker chooses to work for someone else, that a viable choice, but it is more a choice than it is in liberal capitalism. I mention this because despite the best efforts of lawmakers to regulate businesses into centralized control, I think our nation is moving more towards this latter solution. It may not be exactly what Belloc or Chesterton had in mind but it will be what serves us today. So from a distributist perspective, social justice is an emergent property of the system in which we live (and to live is to work). We shouldn't need anti-discrimination law, for example, and to the extent we do, it's either to get a fresh start (as regards the problems that existed before the civil rights movement), or as a bandaid to keep a system from looking more broken than it is (regarding gender discrimination). In the latter case, structural changes to our economy (a shift towards more bossless workplaces, flexible commitments, and ownership by the employees over the workplace) would go a long ways towards rendering these laws unnecessary. Aren't such structural fixes better especially if they add to our freedom rather than detract from it (as regulations do)?
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
There's a lot that's correct about what you wrote, but a lot that isn't. The fundamental dichotomy is: Property is by nature excludable, Energy by nature must be applied to something (usually either Property or the Commons) to do any work. Markets run on excludability. If you can't fence something off and appropriate it as your own, you can't trade it, because someone else can just take it from you. Here's a theorem: the more excludable something is, the more accurately markets value it. This is why Commons Goods and Public Goods are dramatically undervalued in a market system: they're non-excludable. Anyone can breathe the air or attend public schools, but someone has to keep the air clean and provide public schools. Beyond this, I recommend reading Henry George's Progress and Poverty, as well as Das Kapital by Karl Marx. But what it comes to is that in the great struggle between Capital and Labor, or Property and Energy, capital is by nature very excludable, while Labor (lacking organization into a guild or union) is not very excludable (workers cannot stop the capitalist from working for himself, even if only temporarily). Capital will thus be valued more on free markets than Labor, in general. This actually maps exactly onto left-right politics, outside the United States. In most of the world, the Right represents Property/Capital and the Left represents Labor/Energy, and socioeconomic politics consists of trying to form a workable arrangement between the two.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  But what it comes to is that in the great struggle between Capital and Labor, or Property and Energy, capital is by nature very excludable, while Labor (lacking organization into a guild or union) is not very excludable (workers cannot stop the capitalist from working for himself, even if only temporarily). Capital will thus be valued more on free markets than Labor, in general. Excellent point. What I wonder is how excludable Capital truly is, though. Is it inherently excludable? Gold is, and electronic money effective is, but land isn't, and social connections definitely aren't. This actually maps exactly onto left-right politics, outside the United States. In most of the world, the Right represents Property/Capital and the Left represents Labor/Energy, and socioeconomic politics consists of trying to form a workable arrangement between the two. Great observation. In the U.S., we effectively have two political parties that represent Property. One is just more of a dick about it, and more willing to use cultural wedge issues to move useful idiots against their own interests, but they're both pretty rotten. I think, for what it's worth, that their uselessness is by design; an ineffectual government enables these parties' rich owners to get away with murder.
larrys 14y ago
"extremely connected people who have lots of Proprety (sic) and little Energy/talent." It takes energy and talent to maintain connections. Money also helps [1]. With the exception of perhaps some outliers having a connection does little other than give you an audience and the ear of the person who might be able to do something for you. And in order to maintain that connection you have to be in their face and provide some benefit to them that is tangible. In general. [2]. Let's take an example. You did a favor for Paul Graham in college but haven't spoken to him since then. You will probably get his ear, he will listen to you, but how much more is that connection going to do for you without some other compelling value to Paul to help you (vs. what he has to give up to help you if he needs to get a favor off of someone else). "Paul sign my petition" (ok). "Paul get my son into YC" (hmm.) Connections can also be made with energy. I've done multiple free consulting freebies for various people on the net. Ranging from nobodies to very well respected VC's. The VC's are now connections and in fact have taken the lead (w/o being asked I might mention) in referring paid work to me. I put energy into making that connection [3] and I also have to expend energy to keep in front of these people. If I don't, in 5 years the help I gave them will mean little. Conclusion: Don't generalize with "connections" the way people do with "got lucky". Luck and connections are important and yes they are essential. But they also take energy to maintain as well. (Once again I'm not talking about connections that you might have because your father is super important or you're a Kennedy but achievable connections that are attainable to anyone with energy and talent.) [1] (note all the charity events that allow you to mingle with connected people (say the Obama fundraiser recently in NY with Sarah Jessica Parker which was 40k to attend). [2] (Remembering in college where my father had a connection to someone who had something to do with an Ivy League college. I met with that person who very clearly gave me the idea that my father wasn't important enough to him to do anything to get me into the particular school.) [3] I contacted the VC's with offers of gratis help which they accepted, thanked me for, and at least one wrote an unsolicited testimonial.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Most people have a number of small-c connections of varying strength. That's not what I'm talking about. On the other end, there's Connections, which most people don't have. Small-c connections require energy to maintain. They can dry up. Big-C Connections don't, unless you fall into disgrace to a degree that very few powerful people ever will. Big-C Connections mean that people will go out of their way to help you out, in the hope that you'll one day return the favor. Just as there's money (in the sense of the $1.25 I might spend on a cup of coffee) and then there's generational wealth, the same thing exists for (c|C)onnections. Having Real Connections doesn't mean that the VC will fund you. That much is true. It does mean that if you get rejected, you get a sit-down explanation of why, and what to do in the future to get funding, and probably an EIR position. If there's another VC who might be interested, you'll get an introduction. That's what having Real Connections buys you. No, you don't get funded if it doesn't make business sense for the firm to fund you, but you get all the assistance (including an EIR gig in which you can learn what is required to be a "real founder") you need toward getting there... and an unending supply of chances. Without Connections: "We're not interested. Sorry. Our policy is not to discuss our reasons." With Connections: "We like your proposal, but <A>, <B>, and <C> are our issues with it. We also think you need a couple more years of operational experience. Speaking of which, one of our portfolio companies is looking for a <executive-level role> and would like to have it filled by Friday. Can you interview on Thursday?" Most people, of course, don't have kind of safety net. The people in power in society, by and large, don't consider the rest of us to be their social equals. Nobility in the pejorative sense is very much alive in the U.S. If you think otherwise about that set of people, you don't really know them. I do, and they're not nice people and they're not interested in helping out outsiders. They want those doors to stay closed.
toddh 14y ago
Being pro property, primarily in the form of land, in the US is linked to virtue. A republic eventually is founded on the virtue of its citizens, not laws or paper. So property owners, as steak holders in society, are thought to be better behaved. Yeoman farmers are independent and self sufficient which makes them less likely to be manipulated into abusing power. Moving towards a manufacturing/finance society changed that equation dramatically and now all the incentives are towards self-interested manipulation. Virtue has become a public facade, not a private goal.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Being pro property, primarily in the form of land, in the US is linked to virtue. The US is a post-apocalpytic nation. Literally. The indigenous people and cultures were so badly wiped out by a variety of factors (some with European fault, some without) as to leave a sense of an untamed wilderness (actually, there were probably advanced agrarian societies over every inch of the US at one time) and an abundance of land. I think much of the appeal of zombie/apocalyptic fiction in the US comes from a longing for a future (like our semi-imaginary past) of open land. When land was (or seemed) effectively free, the "obviously virtuous", positive-sum thing to do was to find unused land and bring it into productivity-- rather than to squabble for allocation of an existing resource as people did in the cities. Hence the association of the rural frontier with positive-sum virtue and urbanity (and Europe, at that time) with zero-sum congestion. So more specifically, it was a rural style of land ownership (in "new" land) that was associated with virtue. Of course, the frontier closed, and over time we became urban (suburbia is extremely-low-density and often dismal urbanity) like everyone else. Land doesn't matter as much as it did, except in major cities. A landed gentry has been replaced by an educated (sometimes in name only) and connected one, and urban land is only worth so much on account of the people it is (implicitly through locality) connected to. That's why Manhattan and Silicon Valley real estate are so ungodly expensive: because ambitious, smart people move there, so they're good places to set up a business and tap local talent. We are the reason for the value that justifies the price, and for thanks, we get royally fucked-over by the landlords for it. I have no issue with small-time landowners and the notion of owning one's own home, and any land reform policy that I'd support would have to have an exemption (around $500,000 seems reasonable) under which it doesn't apply. However, I definitely don't think the association of land ownership with virtuous stewardship applies to large-scale urban housing ownership. It's classic medieval rent-seeking, nothing more.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Your analysis prompts a bunch of knee-jerk reactions from me which I'm going to attempt to squelch. :) First, property as a result of superstition? Really? This is the first I've ever heard of this. In fact, most primitive societies have no concept of property -- this is why they are primitive. "Culture Cult" does a great job expanding on this argument. Second, a dichotomy between energy and property? Really? So you can't be somebody who has a lot of energy and wants to smash doors down and also somebody who likes to own stuff? Sounds like a conclusion you'd draw from various discussions on MPAA and BitTorrent, but not one that would work for much besides that. Let's say it's fifty thousand years ago and I live in the forest with my clan. I take a flint and make a wood carving. At this point I own nothing -- so if it's nice, the alpha male or one of his females takes it from me. So I stop making carvings. Somewhere down the line, at least in Western Civilization, I make the same carving and get to keep it. This is the beginning of civilization, the basis for all progress: both the naming of property as the product of somebody's energy and the common belief that they get to keep it. Property is stored energy (in your terms). Once it's stored we can trade it or pass it around without having to expend energy again. So progress begins to accumulate. Energy can either create property or not. Of course I can't keep everything I make; the clan needs extra arrowheads or whatever in order to fight off another clan. So I share -- or I'm taxed. However you put it, I give up some of my property, some of my "stored energy" in order to benefit the greater good. There is a tension here, and it's a good tension. Where you come down on most political issues boils down to whether you're a "sharer" or a "creator/trader" You can be both, of course, but your answer to this tension defines your sensibilities. Not some kind of energy/property thing. I love ad-hoc analysis. Your comment strikes me as an informed comment of somebody who has kind of floated along in the various property discussions we tech heads have without taking much time at all to dive deeper (apologies if that sounds condescending.) Might want to up your game a bit. Using your terms, energy without persistent property is a fool's game. Yes, you can trade MP3 tunes all day on the net and it doesn't hurt the economy much. You can participate in the FOSS movement, providing somebody else a bigger piece of property down the road for less effort -- a great cause indeed. But the reason you can act in such an idealized manner is that you're resting on other more fundamental principles of property. They don't come and take your house or computer any more, and the things you create you get to either choose to share or not. Because we rest so solidly on the foundations of property, we begin to forget they are there. Seriously, this property rights equals don't-change-things and religious superstition is way whacked.

michaelochurch 14y ago
"Property" is quirky word, and I now wish I could think of a better word to represent what I'm talking about, because the points you've raised are valid. Property rights are a great thing in moderation. There's a social need for people to have the right to own the products of their own labor. Where property becomes a systemic disease when property relations persist for longer (and allowing larger concentrations than are reasonable) than serve any purpose. If a person who works hard gets rich, great. If his moronic, undeserving, spoiled great-grandchildren are rich and powerful and still call the shots in society, not great. There needs to be a way of storing Energy, as you said, but it needs to be limited and kept reasonable. Infinite transferability of property rights is a demonstrated disaster. For example, private land ownership (at scale, in non-agrarian settings) is pretty much illegitimate. I'm not saying that it's illegitimate for a person to own a small house in the woods on an acre of land. That's fine. I'm talking about what happens at scale. Private land ownership was necessary at one time because it gave people an incentive to use the land properly, but the senseless wealth transfer we see in, e.g., Manhattan is just perverse. People like me (hard-working, ambitious, energetic, talented) are the fucking reason people want to live (or work, or employ people) here... we fucking make cities... and yet, instead of thanks for making this place great, we get the obligation to pay immense sums of money in rent. I would actually support a government solution to the urban land problem. Since the total price is going to be high anyway (because of the high demand for housing) I'd rather see it go into taxes that make the place better-- better schools, more and nicer parks-- than into the already bloated coffers of multimillionaire real estate owners. The religion aspect: private land ownership pretty much emerged out of ancestor veneration. Land "ownership" started at the ability to defend land, which was usually the job of the chieftain or king or alpha male. However, being people, they died. If their descendants weren't strong or persuasive or wily enough to defend the land claim through ordinary means, they started using supernatural claims, based on the idea that the ancestor still existed and could enforce those claims supernaturally. (Over generations, these ancestors became gods.) This was almost certainly not the only religious impulse, and it's far from true that all religion was borne of this desire, but it's a strong and consistent strain of the impulse to corrupt religion toward political aims.
- 14y ago

einhverfr 14y ago

Way back in the day, Cicero wrote Des Republica, which is really belongs with Aristotle's Politics on the bookshelf. Cicero argues that being pro-property (and anti-theft) is simply necessary for people to live together in cities. People can't live together in cities if the means they use to make a living can be taken by their neighbors and they have no recourse. That's a pretty good point, and it means that non-urban societies might have other arrangements but cities require property rights. So no, I don't think it's religious superstition. Secondly I think that there are several essential commodities. These are land (where to have your office, or for production of food, etc), capital, tools, and labor. The first three we can group together as "means of production." The fundamental question that has been so much in dispute since the days of Karl Marx is how we want to address means of production. Capitalism has the means of production owned by the wealthy, who then hire labor. Laborers, deprived of their means of production, are dependent on jobs which, if they are lucky, the capitalists will give them, The concentration of the means of production in the hands of the wealthy capitalists disempowers workers. Communism attempts to solve this problem by taking the means of production from the capitalists and placing them in the hands of the state which, in theory, represents the workers. In practice, however, this creates a more powerful state, and the workers are even more disempowered. In essence you can't solve the problem of big businesses having too much control over the economy by centralizing that control further in the state. Distributism (think of this in terms of distributed computing) seems instead to distribute access to the means of production to the individual laborers. Worker owned and operated cooperatives, such as Mondragon, are economically distributist systems. Bossless corporations (WL Gore, Valve, GitHub) are distributist workplaces. Open Source is a distributist way of going about developing software. In this model the worker has a chance to own all the means of production needed to start a business sufficient to feed his or her family. If the worker chooses to work for someone else, that a viable choice, but it is more a choice than it is in liberal capitalism. I mention this because despite the best efforts of lawmakers to regulate businesses into centralized control, I think our nation is moving more towards this latter solution. It may not be exactly what Belloc or Chesterton had in mind but it will be what serves us today. So from a distributist perspective, social justice is an emergent property of the system in which we live (and to live is to work). We shouldn't need anti-discrimination law, for example, and to the extent we do, it's either to get a fresh start (as regards the problems that existed before the civil rights movement), or as a bandaid to keep a system from looking more broken than it is (regarding gender discrimination). In the latter case, structural changes to our economy (a shift towards more bossless workplaces, flexible commitments, and ownership by the employees over the workplace) would go a long ways towards rendering these laws unnecessary. Aren't such structural fixes better especially if they add to our freedom rather than detract from it (as regulations do)?

eli_gottlieb 14y ago

There's a lot that's correct about what you wrote, but a lot that isn't. The fundamental dichotomy is: Property is by nature excludable, Energy by nature must be applied to something (usually either Property or the Commons) to do any work. Markets run on excludability. If you can't fence something off and appropriate it as your own, you can't trade it, because someone else can just take it from you. Here's a theorem: the more excludable something is, the more accurately markets value it. This is why Commons Goods and Public Goods are dramatically undervalued in a market system: they're non-excludable. Anyone can breathe the air or attend public schools, but someone has to keep the air clean and provide public schools. Beyond this, I recommend reading Henry George's Progress and Poverty, as well as Das Kapital by Karl Marx. But what it comes to is that in the great struggle between Capital and Labor, or Property and Energy, capital is by nature very excludable, while Labor (lacking organization into a guild or union) is not very excludable (workers cannot stop the capitalist from working for himself, even if only temporarily). Capital will thus be valued more on free markets than Labor, in general. This actually maps exactly onto left-right politics, outside the United States. In most of the world, the Right represents Property/Capital and the Left represents Labor/Energy, and socioeconomic politics consists of trying to form a workable arrangement between the two.

michaelochurch 14y ago
But what it comes to is that in the great struggle between Capital and Labor, or Property and Energy, capital is by nature very excludable, while Labor (lacking organization into a guild or union) is not very excludable (workers cannot stop the capitalist from working for himself, even if only temporarily). Capital will thus be valued more on free markets than Labor, in general. Excellent point. What I wonder is how excludable Capital truly is, though. Is it inherently excludable? Gold is, and electronic money effective is, but land isn't, and social connections definitely aren't. This actually maps exactly onto left-right politics, outside the United States. In most of the world, the Right represents Property/Capital and the Left represents Labor/Energy, and socioeconomic politics consists of trying to form a workable arrangement between the two. Great observation. In the U.S., we effectively have two political parties that represent Property. One is just more of a dick about it, and more willing to use cultural wedge issues to move useful idiots against their own interests, but they're both pretty rotten. I think, for what it's worth, that their uselessness is by design; an ineffectual government enables these parties' rich owners to get away with murder.

larrys 14y ago

"extremely connected people who have lots of Proprety (sic) and little Energy/talent." It takes energy and talent to maintain connections. Money also helps [1]. With the exception of perhaps some outliers having a connection does little other than give you an audience and the ear of the person who might be able to do something for you. And in order to maintain that connection you have to be in their face and provide some benefit to them that is tangible. In general. [2]. Let's take an example. You did a favor for Paul Graham in college but haven't spoken to him since then. You will probably get his ear, he will listen to you, but how much more is that connection going to do for you without some other compelling value to Paul to help you (vs. what he has to give up to help you if he needs to get a favor off of someone else). "Paul sign my petition" (ok). "Paul get my son into YC" (hmm.) Connections can also be made with energy. I've done multiple free consulting freebies for various people on the net. Ranging from nobodies to very well respected VC's. The VC's are now connections and in fact have taken the lead (w/o being asked I might mention) in referring paid work to me. I put energy into making that connection [3] and I also have to expend energy to keep in front of these people. If I don't, in 5 years the help I gave them will mean little. Conclusion: Don't generalize with "connections" the way people do with "got lucky". Luck and connections are important and yes they are essential. But they also take energy to maintain as well. (Once again I'm not talking about connections that you might have because your father is super important or you're a Kennedy but achievable connections that are attainable to anyone with energy and talent.) [1] (note all the charity events that allow you to mingle with connected people (say the Obama fundraiser recently in NY with Sarah Jessica Parker which was 40k to attend). [2] (Remembering in college where my father had a connection to someone who had something to do with an Ivy League college. I met with that person who very clearly gave me the idea that my father wasn't important enough to him to do anything to get me into the particular school.) [3] I contacted the VC's with offers of gratis help which they accepted, thanked me for, and at least one wrote an unsolicited testimonial.

michaelochurch 14y ago
Most people have a number of small-c connections of varying strength. That's not what I'm talking about. On the other end, there's Connections, which most people don't have. Small-c connections require energy to maintain. They can dry up. Big-C Connections don't, unless you fall into disgrace to a degree that very few powerful people ever will. Big-C Connections mean that people will go out of their way to help you out, in the hope that you'll one day return the favor. Just as there's money (in the sense of the $1.25 I might spend on a cup of coffee) and then there's generational wealth, the same thing exists for (c|C)onnections. Having Real Connections doesn't mean that the VC will fund you. That much is true. It does mean that if you get rejected, you get a sit-down explanation of why, and what to do in the future to get funding, and probably an EIR position. If there's another VC who might be interested, you'll get an introduction. That's what having Real Connections buys you. No, you don't get funded if it doesn't make business sense for the firm to fund you, but you get all the assistance (including an EIR gig in which you can learn what is required to be a "real founder") you need toward getting there... and an unending supply of chances. Without Connections: "We're not interested. Sorry. Our policy is not to discuss our reasons." With Connections: "We like your proposal, but <A>, <B>, and <C> are our issues with it. We also think you need a couple more years of operational experience. Speaking of which, one of our portfolio companies is looking for a <executive-level role> and would like to have it filled by Friday. Can you interview on Thursday?" Most people, of course, don't have kind of safety net. The people in power in society, by and large, don't consider the rest of us to be their social equals. Nobility in the pejorative sense is very much alive in the U.S. If you think otherwise about that set of people, you don't really know them. I do, and they're not nice people and they're not interested in helping out outsiders. They want those doors to stay closed.

toddh 14y ago

Being pro property, primarily in the form of land, in the US is linked to virtue. A republic eventually is founded on the virtue of its citizens, not laws or paper. So property owners, as steak holders in society, are thought to be better behaved. Yeoman farmers are independent and self sufficient which makes them less likely to be manipulated into abusing power. Moving towards a manufacturing/finance society changed that equation dramatically and now all the incentives are towards self-interested manipulation. Virtue has become a public facade, not a private goal.

michaelochurch 14y ago
Being pro property, primarily in the form of land, in the US is linked to virtue. The US is a post-apocalpytic nation. Literally. The indigenous people and cultures were so badly wiped out by a variety of factors (some with European fault, some without) as to leave a sense of an untamed wilderness (actually, there were probably advanced agrarian societies over every inch of the US at one time) and an abundance of land. I think much of the appeal of zombie/apocalyptic fiction in the US comes from a longing for a future (like our semi-imaginary past) of open land. When land was (or seemed) effectively free, the "obviously virtuous", positive-sum thing to do was to find unused land and bring it into productivity-- rather than to squabble for allocation of an existing resource as people did in the cities. Hence the association of the rural frontier with positive-sum virtue and urbanity (and Europe, at that time) with zero-sum congestion. So more specifically, it was a rural style of land ownership (in "new" land) that was associated with virtue. Of course, the frontier closed, and over time we became urban (suburbia is extremely-low-density and often dismal urbanity) like everyone else. Land doesn't matter as much as it did, except in major cities. A landed gentry has been replaced by an educated (sometimes in name only) and connected one, and urban land is only worth so much on account of the people it is (implicitly through locality) connected to. That's why Manhattan and Silicon Valley real estate are so ungodly expensive: because ambitious, smart people move there, so they're good places to set up a business and tap local talent. We are the reason for the value that justifies the price, and for thanks, we get royally fucked-over by the landlords for it. I have no issue with small-time landowners and the notion of owning one's own home, and any land reform policy that I'd support would have to have an exemption (around $500,000 seems reasonable) under which it doesn't apply. However, I definitely don't think the association of land ownership with virtuous stewardship applies to large-scale urban housing ownership. It's classic medieval rent-seeking, nothing more.