Every time I read something Paul writes, or articles like this one, all I can think of is: privilege.

All this stuff about “do things you love” and “work as though you’ll never die”, or how they were successful because they thought so differently...

What they did differently is they had a ton of money before they started it, and they decided to make a fun club for themselves. It’s a club for smart people of a certain bent, and the number one thing that made it work was that they established that brand (as the in-nerds) and had enough money to pull it off.

The brand says you have to be really smart and nerdy, and willing to sacrifice money to prove you’re worth being in. People who can sacrifice a lot of time and money? Generally well connected, well educated, well off nerds like them. Of course it’s successful. By being the first to get that brand they set up a self-selecting system that brought them those people. Simple as that. And it only works in tech because not many other industries will gravitate towards a brand of (nerdy * altruistic).

Sam is the epitome of smart kids club. He hasn’t really ever done anything impressive (in public, that I’ve seen) but he certainly talks the nerd talk. In every speech, interview and article I’ve read of his I come away thinking 98% of his success is just literally that he nerd-speaks so well and always makes sure to mention mental models or reference some paradigm, and always makes sure to triple-counterfactual himself. But when I look at what he’s actually saying, it’s never interesting. Like this article. I think it’s fundamentally not getting why YC worked, but because it’s so altruistic sounding and has a few counterfactuals, he gets a pass.

It’s the first mover brand, exclusivity, required sacrifice, the club-like aspect that made it filter for already-going-to-be-successful people that made it work.

Privilege is highly underappreciated.

Take Mozart or even composers coming from poverty like Beethoven or Brahms. They were all privileged in various ways, either from being born in a musical family that recognized the prodigy early on (Mozart and Beethoven -- a poor musical family for Beethoven), and I mean extraordinarily early. I think the greater shame would be if we did not appreciate their prodigy. That people have different potential for different things is an inherent consequence of human diversity. As long as individuals are significantly different both culturally as well as physically/mentally (and as long as variation is as unpredictable as it is -- which is probably inherent), we'll need to discover and give opportunity to the right individuals to lead or create what they have to create. I think diversity (and its limitation -- which also allows understanding each other and our internal worlds) is one of the most interesting traits of the human condition.

I certainly would prefer we had a wide ranging system for detecting potential and providing exceptional conditions for the development of certain people (I don't know if this could be called privilege or not), less sensitive of their initial economic condition, class, or place of birth.

> Privilege is highly underappreciated.

Perhaps if it was more widely distributed it would be more broadly appreciated. ;)

(or taken for granted, YMMV)

If privilege was widely distributed, it ceases to be "privilege". The very fact that it's _not_ widely distributed makes it a privilege!

That's true for some reasonable definitions of "privilege" but not others.

Originally-originally, "privilege" meant being subject to some special dispensation that e.g. exempted you from laws that applied to everyone else. (Latin: "private law".) The term then broadened to apply to other sorts of advantages held by individuals and groups, and indeed earlier uses of it are concerned only with unusual advantages enjoyed by (say) the upper classes. But these days it's commonly used to mean any substantial unearned advantage that people have as a result of belonging to one group rather than another.

And by that definition, a kind of privilege absolutely can be widely distributed.

For instance, it is widely and plausibly held that being male confers substantial advantages in life -- that people take men more seriously, are more inclined to promote men to senior positions, tend to give credit to men rather than women for projects in which both are involved, etc.

(In, let's say, Western Europe and North America.)

Some people disagree with that, saying that maybe it was so 30 years ago but that that sort of sexist discrimination has basically gone away now. Some of those people go further and say that actually now it's being female that confers unearned advantages.

I'm pretty sure that almost everyone would agree that at least one of the following two propositions is true: (1) 30 years ago, being male conferred substantial unearned advantages in life. (2) Now, being female confers substantial unearned advantages in life.

Either way, we've got an example of a widely-distributed characteristic that confers substantial advantages for reasons other than merit.

Which is exactly why it’s important to remind those who have it, especially when they tend to enjoy authoring ode’s of self-congratulation.

I agree! Disregarding that technically everyone can't be privileged -- taking it in the sense each individual should have the opportunity to develop as much as his potential. Things are of course never so simple, as there are limited resources, we can't always tell what their potentials (esp. of children) are, some potentials add more value to society, and sometimes the individuals don't even want to develop their potential!

This should be a primary goal of education. Then it becomes very personal, exciting, ready to bring out the best in ourselves.

Privilige is a lot like talent (i suppose talent is a type of privilige).

Yes it is needed to succeed, and yes it is unfairly distributed. However, people think that's all that is needed to succeed at a high level, where really that is about 5% of what is needed. The other 95% is a lot of hard work and self improvement. Which is hard. I know i personally probably don't have the self control to work hard enough to truly make it big.

For some reason humans seem to fixate on the part of the equation we cannot control, even though its the part that probably matters the least.

> The other 95% is a lot of hard work and self improvement.

That is not my experience. I see that as Magical Voluntarism.

It's also not true for the 99% of humans who are having to make do with a plundered commons [1].

[1] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-12-11/guy-standings-...

There are enormous numbers, in absolute terms, that are reasonably privileged in the modern world. Millions. But only a tiny number of those people go on to found a billion dollar company, or become one of the greatest composers in world history.

It's unequivocally true that privilege plays an important role, and that we should strive to give everyone that same level of opportunity. But the people that succeed at the level of PG or Mozart are clearly working harder, and/or are more innately talented than their equally privileged peers.

> But only a tiny number of those people go on to found a billion dollar company, or become one of the greatest composers in world history.

That aren't the only things that qualify as "succeed" though, are they? Most of those that are privileged succeed. They may not turn $10mm into $10bn, but they'll likely see it turn into $20mm.

I agree generally that the money & connections you start out with aren't all, but 5%? No, certainly not. We'd see many rich people fall into poverty if that was the case.

> But the people that succeed at the level of PG or Mozart are clearly working harder, and/or are more innately talented than their equally privileged peers.

That I agree with, completely. Hard work is a multiplier. But working three times as hard with $1000 won't get you close to just working normally with $10,000,000.

But the article wasnt about people who achieve modest success and (very) comfortable life styles. It was about what it takes to truly make it above and beyond.

> re 10 million to 20 million

It would be interesting to see actual stats on that. Doubling your money over 20 years isn't super hard. However rich people are people too with vices and whatnot. I wonder what percent of those rich people blow their money on blackjack (etc) instead.

> What they did differently is they had a ton of money before they started it, and they decided to make a fun club for themselves.

I don't get the impression that they had a "ton" of money when they started. Sure, they were wealthy, but no more than, say, a successful doctor or lawyer. Certainly mere peanuts compared to the institutional venture capital funds that existed at the time. "Who would win? Name brand VC firms with hundreds of millions of dollars and all the right connections, or some guy who founded a mildly successful startup who now paints and writes essays for nerds?"

> The brand says you have to be really smart and nerdy, and willing to sacrifice money to prove you’re worth being in. People who can sacrifice a lot of time and money? Generally well connected, well educated, well off nerds like them. Of course it’s successful. By being the first to get that brand they set up a self-selecting system that brought them those people. Simple as that. And it only works in tech because not many other industries will gravitate towards a brand of (nerdy * altruistic).

It's always easy to say this in retrospect, but don't you find it a bit odd that you are essentially declaring that this absolutely massive pile of money and influence was just lying there untouched for 50+ years and no one noticed it until, IIRC, some kid at MIT asked pg why, if startups were so cool, he wasn't funding any?

> I don't get the impression that they had a "ton" of money when they started.

Viaweb was PG's first company, which sold to Yahoo for $49 million in 1998. Just as an FYI -- I think PG/JL/YC are great.

But how much went to them, vs investors, taxes, etc? It's not like they started YC with $50 million.

even if 10% went to them.. this is 1998.. it is a lot of money back back then (more than 99% of people will make in their life time) and is a lot of money now.

But not a lot of money in comparison to the VCs who could have done it in 1998. Not either a lot of connections in comparison to the VCs.

Ten million dollars is a lot of money, but not especially rare among financial types and tech titans.

But the people who actually make something like this are much rarer.

I covered that in my comment with the “and” clause. I don’t deny they were radically successful at making a club. That’s my point, their success was in making an elite social group, not in any special VC strategy. The only way to replicate their success (if that’s what you define success as) would be to somehow supersede their reputation as the most desirable club.

> That’s my point, their success was in making an elite social group, not in any special VC strategy. The only way to replicate their success (if that’s what you define success as) would be to somehow supersede their reputation as the most desirable club.

The reason their particular club became elite is that they developed a reputation for helping people to succeed. And they developed that reputation by doing it, repeatedly. That is what I would call a successful VC strategy.

You may not remember what VC was like at that time. $50k for 50% was the expected seed round for a 4-person new grad team with about a year under their belt in Boston. I remember thinking the YC deal was crazy good crazy early. Anybody remember what it was? I recall something like $25k for 10% in the first batch. This was enough for poverty rent and ramen for 4 people for 1 year. The only problem I had with this was that he wanted all founders to quit their job before even applying, and then getting in was tough odds.

In my opinion, "privilege" is a little bit of an occlusive term used to paper over the complex idea of socioeconomic class and the ways that it has historically been passed down. I think it's popular because it provides a way for people who think of a world that should be (or worse, used to be) a meritocracy that isn't in a way that is only one step away from that -- it's privilege that keeps us from our meritocracy!

But it's not. There's class. There's caste. There's a lot of things that have to do with where in society's proto-aristocratic ranking system almost every person is born into. A lot of societies have managed to make large parts of this more uniform than others (an achievement which I would like to see more of).

For the vast majority of societies over the vast majority of history, class ossifies into caste in all kinds of ways. So when I read what folks term "privilege" it just makes me think it's talking about folks who have engineered a new caste and a new class. And isn't it always the case that the "old money" which pejoratively calls a new class "new money" was once given such a name by the previous holders of "old money?" And so perhaps we really are saying the same thing here because I couldn't agree more with your final statement:

"It’s the first mover brand, exclusivity, required sacrifice, the club-like aspect that made it filter for already-going-to-be-successful people that made it work."

I checked out your twitter, are you RT Altman ironically?

I did like that one, I thought, hey, gotta give it to him. I think thats my one retweet of his ever, ironic timing.. I contain multitudes!

If a solider can put down his life for a principle, he can go hungry and loose his job too.

While it true you are not in position to make that statement to him, it is no less true.

We did not get independence by doing the convenient thing. thousands of years of caste based discrimination is not going to go away without people standing up and sacrificing.

To abolish slavery, Lot of people lost lives and faced real pain to stand up to injustice, It is true in every fight for racial equality or women rights or anything else in each society.

Social change does not happen by doing the easy thing. It is always a sacrifice to make our community a better place.

Generally speaking, a soldier lays down their life for their buddy, not for a higher principle.

> Strong morals are sometime a privilege :)

In your example it has nothing to do with morals but everything to do with enforcement. If there was a traffic cop standing at the start of the one way street almost no one would have entered wrong way.

I was going to say there’s a lack of evidence for this but then I looked at what people earn in India vs similar countries here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD?most_...

It’s amazingly clear that the trend is poverty === bad driving.

> I was going to say there’s a lack of evidence

Just go to India, you will notice lot of people running the light, they dont do that if there is traffic cop.

Nothing to do with poverty, since poor people cannot afford cars and motorbikes.

This is kind of orthogonal to the previous claim.

Morality is what you do when no one is looking.

If traffic laws are being enforced, it changes the calculus from "if I drive recklessly I can eat today" to "if I get caught driving recklessly and am fined I don't eat today or tomorrow".

Good point.

I travelled in India for about 6 months. It’s always been my favourite country. Low wages would be a better term than poverty.

Do you mean Maxwell or Maslows hierachy?

I dont buy the argument that poor people have to break the rules. Of course in India you have correlation a lot of poor people and a lot of people evading the rules, but does this imply causation? Probably the causation is in the other direction.

I believe weak and corrupt enforcement (the latter beeing the worst) leads to this. If you know the police will fine you anyway no matter what you do, some probably stop following the rules and then it becomes a culture.

Ah yes, enforcing the law, which, “in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

Welp you're right: Maslow's.

Re breaking rules: I think it is more of a spectrum. As you become richer, you become more able to follow the 'nicer' rules. Poor people generally don't go around murdering for example, but I did see a lot of relatively smaller rules broken.

I am sure there is a very human mix of laziness, mob mentality, corruption that feed into it - but his meta point is still true: Some rules are meant for privileged people.

Unless the party line is that 'you should be willing to die for your morals': There are very few who live by this and I admire them a lot. But I like a more practical approach to life - meaning the above anecdote consoles me.

Traffic rules are not for the privileged who can afford nice cars witj airbags and good medical care, the are more useful for the people who cant.

Thankfully there is this virus going around and we can all see the correlation between the wealth of the people and their propensity to break rules.

What correlation do you observe? Where i am, it seems all rich and poor follow the rules (with some minor exceptions). I mean makes sense who wants to get sick?

> What correlation do you observe? Where i am, it seems all rich and poor follow the rules (with some minor exceptions). I mean makes sense who wants to get sick?

https://twitter.com/sheela2010/status/1309053011168288769?s=...

This shows how difficult it is for the common man to follow the rules. I am sure the rich people in Mumbai are following social distancing.

The rules are made by the rich for the benefit of the rich and applied in that manner. There's a reason a millionaire with a rape charge spends about a half hour at a police station and a poor person with the same charge won't see daylight until after his trial.

Traffic laws especially are absolutely made for everyone as are most laws and social rules.

The parable is upside down:

The man was almost assuredly 'not late for his job' (though possibly), he was probably just driving the wrong way because he could, because that's what everyone else does, and it's the 'de facto' rule.

If he and everyone else actually followed traffic rules - then they would all be less likely to be late, they would all be probably somewhat wealthier, especially if they followed the other rules as well.

"He took a bribe to feed his family" - maybe - but we need to stop taking bribes.

I think there's a good bit in Sam's point about why PG and Jessica were able to do it, but it also has to be taken in context: they were starting from a place of exceptional place, arguably from 'privilege' (is how some people would describe it).

> If he and everyone else actually followed traffic rules - then they would all be less likely to be late, they would all be probably somewhat wealthier, especially if they followed the other rules as well.

How does obeying traffic laws make you wealthier? Unless you're just referring to the cost of the infraction (assuming you get cited).

If everyone obeys the traffic laws, everyone saves time, every process in the country is more efficient, everyone is wealthier and safer.

There are a ton of second order effects:

+ Considerably fewer accidents, meaning more efficient use of medical staff. + Considerably cheaper insurance (all things being equal)

And tons of 3rd order effects:

+ A completely chaotic transportation system means it's probably difficult to transport a lot of things efficiently - and certain industrial systems may not be possible.

+ If people don't generally obey traffic rules, there are probably a ton of situations wherein driving would be literally too dangerous. The example is Germany: where they are very well socialized and follow the rules (even in auto making and quality) they can drive a zillion miles an hour on the highway, still relatively safely. You can't do that unless everyone plays the game.

'Intelligent Social Organization' is literally the foundation of civilization.

It's not 'natural resources' that make us rich, it's our institutions, intergenerational intelligence and 'rules' of various kinds: social, legal, cultural upon which the former two artifacts depend.

The irony of the parable is that the 'traffic cheater' may be doing something he 'needs to do' but it's that very activity which is limiting he and his own community's ability to be successful.

By getting less involved in accidents.

The rules are made by representatives for the benefit of the voting block that elected them.

Some laws favor the rich, many laws favor whatever special-interest group a politician is beholden to (whether that's a union, an ethnic group, a key industry in their area, or a group organized around a particular issue or ideology)

The commonality between all special interests groups that have influence over politicians is money. The rich have more of it.

Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral!