
A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations (2011) - luu
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/if-everyone-else-is-such-an-idiot-how-come-youre-not-rich/249430/
======
GlenTheMachine
A similar story that I love regarding the infamous Van Halen brown M&M
contract rider:

“Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-
level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear,
where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical
errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the
flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear
through.

The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because
there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So
just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say
“Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot
spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes …” This kind of thing. And article
number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: “There will be no brown M&M’s in
the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full
compensation.”

So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … well,
line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a
technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a
problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something
like, literally, life-threatening.”

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-
check/brown-out/)

~~~
michaelcampbell
> So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … ...They
> didn’t read the contract.

I don't know that that necessarily follows. It could be that they read it,
said "fuck that", and did everything else to spec. Good story tho.

~~~
romwell
> It could be that they read it, said "fuck that", and did ...

Exactly. You wonder what else they said "fuck that" to because _they_ don't
care or think it's not necessary.

An even better case to catch.

~~~
jschwartzi
Yeah. I'm imagining the guy who says "fuck that" to picking the brown m&ms out
as the same kind of person who goes "10A circuits should be fine. They build
safety margins into those" or "those rafters should be fine to hold 2 tons of
equipment. They're really stout 2x6's." You know, the kind of person who just
assumes they know better and that what is planned doesn't matter. And if you
let them do that they will totally kill you with their negligence.

~~~
michaelcampbell
> "fuck that" to picking the brown m&ms out as the same kind of person who
> goes "10A circuits should be fine. They build safety margins into those"

You've never worked with an electrician. This is not how these things work.

I love that this story gives people the warm fuzzies; enough to downvote. =D

------
georgespencer
This article puts it better than I ever could. I had a similar reaction when I
read extremely critical press coverage of some VCs in Europe investing in
YPlan, which eventually sold for a nominal amount to Time Out London.

The synopsis of all the coverage was: "How could they have spent all that
money? And how could the investors have been so STUPID?"

My friend Fred Destin wrote a great essay on this[1], and I'll do the horrid
thing of quoting my own note to him in reply:

> It’s analogous to a soccer fan questioning the manager’s decision to put
> player X on the field instead of Y. The manager sees both players on the
> training ground for hours every day, knows their mood, talks to them,
> understands how they respond to different situations, and consults his
> coaches. Then the matchgoing fan sees 90 minutes of output on Saturday and
> makes a judgement with <1% of the data a manager has.

> Past a certain point in fundraising and traction, it’s impossible to believe
> that a startup failing is anything more interesting than a combination of
> poorer-than-expected execution, and bets not paying off.

[1] [https://medium.com/tech-london/hey-yplan-how-do-you-dare-
go-...](https://medium.com/tech-london/hey-yplan-how-do-you-dare-go-
bust-177bc67efdbb)

~~~
asdff
Scale this up to anything and you will want to be governed by a benevolent
dictator. Not even senators themselves read the full bills they vote on, and I
don't blame them with it being hundreds of pages of reading that could easily
be parted out to aides, but the electorate certainly doesn't have this
advantage. Maybe 1% of voters are truly informed.

~~~
blaser-waffle
My IT director doesn't know every facet of what is in our environment, and
generally is not up to date as to what changes are happening on the day to
day. _And he doesn 't need to be._

The point of high-level workers is so they can focus on high-level priorities.
They have staff -- legal aids, system admins, business analysts, whatever --
whose job it is to digest that stuff and put it into simple briefings for
leadership to evaluate in the context of other issues.

> I don't blame them with it being hundreds of pages of reading that could
> easily be parted out to aides, but the electorate certainly doesn't have
> this advantage

The electorate isn't expected to have this advantage, and is not expected to
read the bills. The whole reason for representative democracy is so that the
common voter does not have to parse this stuff -- that's explicitly the point.
I find someone who reflects my views and I put them in office, and trust that
they'll be able to digest what's happening and vote accordingly. The common
man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international banking, military
theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and food scarcity.

~~~
cvlasdkv
A lot to unpack here.

> The common man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international banking,
> military theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and food
> scarcity.

What better use is there of the common man's time than understanding societal
issues like justice and scarcity? Are you describing how the world is or
claiming how it should be? If you do not understand justice, scarcity, etc.
how can you claim to elect someone who reflects your views--ignoring that a
lot of politics is lesser evil voting?

An uneducated populace voting is a worst-case scenario for a representative
democracy.

~~~
michaelcampbell
> > The common man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international
> banking, military theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and
> food scarcity.

> What better use is there of the common man's time than understanding
> societal issues like justice and scarcity?

Both of those can be true.

~~~
cvlasdkv
Hence my question of whether the OP is prescriptive or descriptive.

------
BlackFly
People call people idiots instead of trying to understand how they made a
mistake because of fundamental attribution error. We all do it.

People are predominantly successful because of luck. Opportunity, connections,
upbringing, all luck. Yes, you still need to make the right decision at the
right time.

There is a pernicious tendency to make a fallacious argument for intelligence
because of success; that is, people become convinced of intelligence because
of success. The most obvious example today is the president of the USA. He is
convinced of his own intelligence because clearly he is one of the most
successful people in the country. I don't think many reasonable people would
argue for his genius. On the other end of the spectrum, it seems obvious to me
that in the billions of poor people on this planet there is an unknown genius
unable to escape his or her circumstances.

We make mistakes. We don't try to understand the mistakes of others as we call
them idiots. We are not necessarily capable of succeeding even if we are
smarter than those that have.

~~~
pdimitar
Thank you! Even if your comment is slightly off-topic I always get upset when
people just immediately assume genius because of success. Some people almost
literally didn't have to do anything but to open their wallet to receive
dollars in, at the right time, while being at the right place.

This very often gets overlooked. The world's economy is an MMORPG game and
networking / contacts matter much more than many of us who swear in
meritocracy would like to believe.

------
iEchoic
Another form of this that seems to have taken over online discussions in the
last few years is “<person> did <thing> because they are evil” (or rich).

As an example, I’ve noticed that privacy-related discussion on HN is often
thought-terminated by comments that reduce down to “<company> is doing
<perceived privacy-destroying thing> because they want to destroy your
privacy”. On reddit, a common form of this is “<politician> is doing
<something implausibly comic book villain-y> because they are evil”.

When the motive isn’t clear, I often enter these discussions trying to learn
more about _why_ \- but more often than not, I just leave feeling the same way
as the author here.

------
vikramkr
They picked an example that really aged well. Look at netflix today - it's
clear that a little bit of humility would have been warranted in 2011 when
talking about the company.

------
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
Communication is a key to a high-level position in a hierarchy, and therefore,
to the wealth. But very high IQ people have difficulty connecting with the
majority of other people, so they lag behind.

------
quickthrower2
A interesting take on this phenomenon from the point of view of the insider
and outsider - [https://commoncog.com/blog/good-synthesis-adapting-to-
uncert...](https://commoncog.com/blog/good-synthesis-adapting-to-uncertainty)

------
Traster
I feel like what isn't really properly understood in these situations is the
statistical chances that are involved here. 10 people put $50 on the roulette
table, and then we celebrate the guy who hit their number. That genius who hit
their number still had a negative expected value when placing that bet.
Colette Martin would've been right to criticize Reed Hastings if he were
making that bet with Netflix's money. But we don't read articles about the
CEOs who make bad bets and lose them, and we don't really know if the CEOs who
won made good bets or bad bets.

It's possible the richest CEOs are actually the worst at picking bets, because
they're the ones who picked bets that were the least likely to pay off, and
therefore got the biggest pay out when they won. If 50 people were making the
same bet as Reed Hastings, then Netflix would've found it _far_ harder to
succeed, since they would've been competing for talent, content and customers
with 50 other companies. The reason Netflix exploded in growth is partly
because they were the only ones serving that market. Maybe that was a genius
stroke of insight, or maybe he was one of a thousand people making bad bets,
and he's the one that it paid off for.

~~~
tomhoward
> we don't read articles about the CEOs who make bad bets and lose them

Yes we do, all the time: Theranos, WeWork, WebVan, Myspace, Friendster,
BlackBerry, Enron, Worldcom, etc, etc, etc.

Sure, we don't hear about companies that never get anywhere because they never
did anything interesting to start with, because that's unremarkable.

But we hear a lot about the companies that attracted a lot of success or hype
early but then "bet" wrong. (In fact, these stories arguably get a
disproportionate amount of coverage, due to schadenfreude from journalists and
their audience.)

The roulette spin analogy is not apt, because building a successful company is
not a single bet; it's many many bets, every year/month/day over many years,
which moves it well out of the realm of random chance and mostly into the
realm of skill.

And before someone says it: nobody argues good luck is not a factor in a
company's success. But that is mostly at the very beginning (e.g., Steve Jobs
meeting Woz; Bill Gates' mother knowing the chairman of IBM) and luck alone is
not nearly enough.

Skilled leadership over the long term makes all the difference between success
and wasted opportunity.

~~~
scottlocklin
It's interesting that plenty of people were flinging poo at Reed Hastings when
he was making the transition between mailing DVDs and streaming, and pretty
much nobody in the media dared fling poo at the obvious "violating laws of
physics" shennanegins happening at Theranos before Tyler Shultz took them to
the ground.

None of the other examples are really comparable to Netflix either; they were
all companies which eventually failed, but which business reporters didn't
particularly dislike until after they failed. Netflix was nearly universally
reviled for making "dumb" decisions which turned out to be correct, and
Mcardle deserves credit for noticing that Hastings was probably a better CEO
than most business reporters.

------
esmi
> "If everyone else is such an idiot, how come I'm not rich?"

Unfortunately the answer to that question is, I spend way too much time on
hacker news.

------
silveraxe93
While I agree with the main thrust of the article (Chesterton's fence, etc.),
the author seems to take as a given the fact that Netflix is sliding back into
becoming as expensive as cable, because the content providers are setting the
prices.

But Netflix's value is not from competing against cable on price, it's
competing against _piracy_ on _convenience_.

Content providers will never again see the same profits, because the de-facto
price of content is zero. It's too easy to pirate, and morally grey enough
that people are willing to do it.

Netflix got so big because it captured the market of people who were willing
to pay for the convenience. If this gets too high they will just go back to
pirating.

~~~
nemothekid
I’m not sure if that’s a given. People going back to piracy sort of assumes
people will happily walk back to watching sketchy streams on laptop screens. I
think the bar will pretty high for people who wish to watch on Apple Devices,
Rokus or Smart TVs.

There has been enough time for people to get locked into walled gardens.

~~~
asdff
Piracy in 2020 is more polished than first party streaming platforms.

~~~
nemothekid
I think content acquisition still has several hurdles as well as the pipelines
of your favorite metadata scraper isn't exactly trivial to setup.

The actual software, once installed is really nice (I have a Plex Server +
Infuse on an Apple TV), but in my case I still pay for content (via usenet).

~~~
asdff
There is software that has already done this for you, no need to configure
anything, just open the app, search the title, and start watching.

------
ramraj07
What's ironic to me is (IMO) Netflix is probably the shrewdest big company in
existence now. Hastings has dominated not one but two markets, the second
obviously larger and more insurmountable than the first. Almost Every single
decision they make (including and especially ones that make customers unhappy,
like their shitty browsing experience) seems so calculated and thoughtful it's
just amazing.

Even I thought Disney plus might be the beginning of the end for Netflix, that
it finally met a Goliath it couldn't best, but now even that isnt obvious
anymore.

~~~
quickthrower2
Meh, Netflix is one of many for me. Would be happy if it didn't exist, to
watch other stuff on other streaming and I don't think they necessarily have
the best content.

Netflix try's to get you hooked on their originals, but the problem with that
is once you binged a series you want something else - they cant keep feeding
you the crack that is that current series because they take months to produce,
so you switch to something else - and at that point it could be something else
on Netflix, or just as easily something else somewhere else. I don't think
Netflix is really that sticky.

But maybe I am proving the point of the article and I'm missing the strategy.

~~~
ramraj07
Exactly. We all keep talking about leaving Netflix but it looks like we
aren't. How long has Netflix now been without major movies? Clearly whatever
they're doing works - from my ground-level experience, everyone has at least a
couple of shows that they like watching in Netflix, and everyone shares
accounts as well so in the end it's a few dollars a month for always having a
backup service with a lot of "meh" titles at the least.

Perhaps that's what the company is gunning for? Perhaps they noticed that the
crowd that sees Adam Sandler movies is the main market and they don't
necessarily need to pander to "sophisticated" audience to be a successful
company? Who knows. It just looks mindful, minimally, where they're trying to
chart out a path that they CAN do, given all their constraints (mainly every
major IP now being protected by their parent for their own streaming service).

------
aetherspawn
It's an intelligence to realize that in order to make a lot of money, you have
to be ruthless at business. In order to be ruthless like that, you need to
neglect being a good and reasonable person, even to those closest to you. Such
is the cost of money. Money doesn't buy real friends or happiness, and so the
smartest among us are deliberate in not accumulating wealth needlessly. Whilst
everyone else assumes their stupidity for not accumulating wealth, in truth,
it’s a Dunning-Kruger situation.

------
abellerose
I've encountered a few individuals fairly well off and where they think of
everyone as idiots. These individuals came from an upbringing of lower class
and they eventually had the right opportunities happen for getting ahold of
some money. Example from something comparable to bitcoin happening. Nothing in
anyway of were these persons were contributing to society in how they gathered
a good portion of wealth.

I've also encountered people from wealthy families and these individuals
typically don't comment on what they think of others less fortunate in
society. They also stay out of politics or anything where people get
disgruntled about. I'm unsure if it was how they were raised and or they know
the game of life is rigged. In any case, I respect this group the most which
is sort of odd because everything was handed to them.

Anyway, the first group of individuals probably would have been better persons
if they were just born into money as well. They have a fallacy in their head
of they earned their success and wouldn't have had it any other way in life.
In reality they just had a worse path to eventually becoming financially
independent and sadly these individuals place their ego around wealth because
of it.

I don't necessarily believe in the traditional idea of luck. I think
everything is predetermined at birth. But wow does it help to be born into a
wealthy family with somewhat decent genetics. Quality of life will be so much
better. It's so noticeable that I sometimes wonder how others don't see it as
well.

------
LatteLazy
I've been learning this slowly over the last few years. I was a typical
science guy. Then a close friend dragged me to the gym (which was just foreat
heads right?). And it really helped with my depression and now it's a major
activity for me. Same for Networking and Sales skills and Watching Sports and
Foreign languages...

Embarrassed me would like to publically apologies for assuming everyone else
is an idiot and should do what I do. Sorry guys!

------
marcus_holmes
>> I mean, Reed Hastings did manage to build this rather large and successful
business that killed off one of the most successful retail operations of its
day. It's possible that he just sort of did this by accident. But is this
really the most likely explanation?

It's possible, yes. And if we consider that there were possibly a few thousand
people at that time trying to make that business work, then "by accident" does
start to look like the best explanation.

Was/is he smarter than everyone else trying to do the same thing? Probably
not.

Was/is he better connected, better funded, more able to run a business, than
the others? Possibly, but probably not.

Was/is he luckier than everyone else? Almost by definition, if we define
"luck" as "something that helps people succeed".

It's a very nebulous definition. But there's definitely a Venn diagram overlap
of "by accident" and "by being very lucky". Even without getting to FedEx
levels of "lucky", there is definite "luck" involved in making decisions based
on incomplete information that will turn out to have outsize effects on the
business later. This is a normal activity for startup founders, and I'll bet
serious money that more than a few of them were made in Netflix' early years.

We always underestimate survivor bias when considering successful startup
stories. And without studying the other people who were trying to build the
same business at the same time, we have no idea why some of them succeeded and
others failed. Without this information, it's impossible to say whether
Netflix succeeded "by accident" or by design.

------
santoshalper
I had a manager early in my career who used to say "everyone else's job is
harder than you think." That really stuck with me.

------
V-2
A non-native speaker here - what does "debacletacular" mean? The word only has
a few hits on Google. I understand it's a neologism of sorts, a conflation,
but what's the meaning?

I'm guessing "a spectacular debacle" \- AKA "epic fail"?

~~~
tomgp
it's a port-manteau of spectacular and debacle i.e. a spectacular debacle

~~~
V-2
Port-manteau, another one :) Thanks!

------
fit2rule
Oh, this is easy.

The usual response to such a question is - "you're just an anti-intellectual!
Being rich doesn't mean you're smart - any fool can do it! Real non-fools
write their opinions down and other fools follow them."

/s

I've known some utterly immoral people become very, very wealthy - I might've
even helped them along the way. The reason I'm not rich and they are, is that
they decided they didn't want to help me along my way.

Being rich isn't an indicator of intelligence, nor is it an indicator of hard
work or decent ethics. It does, usually, mean that someone wanted to give you
money for some reason - and even a fool or an intellectual can do such a thing
for love. Or, not.

~~~
taneq
> It does, usually, mean that someone wanted to give you money for some reason

Isn't that the definition of participation in the economy? You created goods,
or provided services, or arranged for goods to be created or services
provided, and in exchange people give you money?

Cases where people are given money without in some way earning it are far in
the minority.

~~~
pessimizer
> You created goods, or provided services, or arranged for goods to be created
> or services provided,

or drank with someone on a regular basis, or married one of their relatives,

~~~
taneq
It's almost like building social connections and establishing trust with other
people is important to later being trusted in other contexts!

------
goto11
So do not attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by you not
understanding the whole picture.

~~~
kqr
I have for a long time now extended Hanson's razor with "... and never
attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by ignorance."

The beauty of it is that it doesn't need to say who is the ignorant one!

------
boffinism
Because you're an idiot too. Also me. We're all just muppets, with blind
spots, distorted perspectives and emotions that override reason. Some idiots
are just lucky in the right ways at the right times.

Hey, at least it's consistent.

------
doorstar
I kept thinking this when the 'cybertruck' was unveiled. Suddenly everyone
around me was explaining in detail why this truck was going to be a complete
fiasco and a danger to everyone else on the road. I'll happily acknowledge
that Musk is off his rocker, but can people really think that he doesn't know
how to make a car?

( I'll admit a soft spot for the thing after someone pointed out it looks like
what happens when you let back end engineers design the front end )

~~~
philwelch
I will fully admit that Musk knows how to make a car. He’s a car person and
had a history of owning and enjoying sporty luxury cars before Tesla. But he’s
not a truck person.

~~~
doorstar
He didn't own any rockets either.

I don't know if the cybertruck is a good or bad idea. I don't know if it's
going to succeed or fail. I don't know how anyone can possibly declare with
confidence that they do know how the truck will do when released.

~~~
philwelch
The whole problem with eg the BMW i-Series or most other electric cars is that
they are designed in a silly way that says, “look at me, I’m a weird electric
car, I’m not a normal car at all, I’m willing to look like a total dork in
order to virtue-signal about being eco-friendly”. Teslas just look like sports
cars—except the Cybertruck’s styling is 100% “dorky virtue signal about having
a weird special truck”, and truck people are even less likely than car people
to put up with that.

I looked to see what truck users on /r/Trucks had to say about it.[1][2] Here
are some highlights, both positive and negative:

> It’s really damn cool aside from the roof coming to a point. I’m not sure I
> understand that design decision. However, onboard air compressor, 110v/220v
> accessory power, fast as shit, good ground clearance, integral bed cover and
> ramps, air ride suspension, and tough shell to boot... there is a lot to
> like here. I might just have to buy one in a couple years.

> Yeah because everyone wants a ‘bed’ you can’t load from the sides.

> I think [being able to load the truck bed from the sides] really only
> matters for people who use their trucks for actual work. This is obviously
> for people who want a truck for play and not work.

> ... he could have taken this seriously and actually made an impact. Now he’s
> proven the older anti EV crowd 100% correct that an electric truck isn’t a
> viable alternative.

> Clearly designed by someone who has literally never even used a truck once
> in their entire life.

> It's stupid tall bedsides ruin it for slide in campers too. If it wasn't for
> that the 3500lb payload and huge battery would make it great for a slide in.

> I'm surprised you all are not pouncing on the unibody. The other "truck"
> (Honda) that uses a unibody construction does not get much love.

> [People who like the Cybertruck design are] those who've never actually used
> a truck to haul items and/or trailers. Those who are in the ranching,
> mining, and other similar industries are laughing at this.

> Is the bed cover transparent? Seems like the rear window is only usable when
> the cover is retracted. I'm sorry. This is a truck for the Ridgeline crowd.
> No 8ft bed option. Only crew cab configuration. AWD, not 4WD. Can't tow a
> Gooseneck or 5th wheel, which you're gonna want when towing a 14K trailer.
> People will buy it. I won't.

> It’s a weird case of form over function. He was so focused on the blade
> runner vibe he forgot to make sure it was usable as a truck. Can’t even get
> to the front of the bed without opening the tailgate and getting inside.

> Trucks have a utilitarian purpose. There is a reason for their shapes. And
> if you look worldwide there are some differences, but also some
> commonalities. Like being able to access the frigging bed. That’s a massive
> failure here.

> There’s some things about truck design that are important to the function of
> being a truck. Like not having angled bed sides so you can fucking reach the
> first 1/2 of the bed without getting in it or being able to tow a 5th wheel.

> After looking at more pictures today I realized it doesn't even have a true
> 6.5' bed. It's much shorter than that, but angles in underneath the rear
> seats. Probably ok for hauling a few sheets of plywood, but putting in, say,
> furniture, would be harder.

> I set things in the bed over the bedside a lot. And climb in the sides. I’d
> have to awkwardly yeet shit over the side of that angled monstrosity

> This truck looks like an absolute nightmare to load and unload tbh. I
> actually even ditched my bed for a Bradford flatbed to make my truck easier
> to use. Rear/side visibility looks awful. Boasts a 14,000 towing capacity
> yet it looks like a nightmare to hook up to a trailer. I’d love to know how
> far this thing can tow 14,000lbs. Payload of “3,900lbs”. What does the truck
> itself weigh? Does Tesla understand GVWR or how to calculate payload or is
> it assuming it’s potential buyers do not? I guess I just don’t understand
> the whole concept and what exactly they’re going for. Seems like they’re
> trying to do too much. This has been the plague of these types of
> “crossovers” which is exactly what this is. El Camino, Ford Ranchero, Subaru
> Brat, Subaru Baja, Chevy Avalanche, Honda Ridgeline, the list goes on and
> on.

> Having a large locking cover would give me so much peace of mind when I'm
> parked with my tools in there. Having the thing build of stainless steel
> made me ask why hasn't trucks been main of stainless steel for years.

> The bed has some L-Tracks and T-Slots in it too for easy tie downs, which
> was something I learned from a video I saw that someone did a test drive in

> Literally the only good truck feature is the integrated full width ramp in
> the tailgate.

> And you can lower the suspension in the back to make it easier! I would have
> killed for that the last few times i was loading heavy equipment into the
> back of my truck by myself. I had to make due with backing up to a hill and
> using a shitty steel ramp that would fall if i so much as looked at it
> wrong.

> Let's be honest, most people in suburbia/cities with trucks are just
> drugstore cowboys anyway. This truck will meet the needs of most consumers

> Good luck towing a 5th wheel with that thing

> If you need a truck, Cybertruck's already disqualified itself. Little
> clearance, no room for mods, unibody, no side access to the truck bed,
> likely range issues (once you add a load), and that's just the stuff we know
> about now. I can only imagine buying this if you buy a truck just so you can
> feel like you're driving a truck but never plan on using the truck features
> beyond occasional off-roading.

[1]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/Trucks/comments/dzvqhx/tesla_truck/](https://old.reddit.com/r/Trucks/comments/dzvqhx/tesla_truck/)

[2]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/Trucks/comments/e061ru/style_contra...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Trucks/comments/e061ru/style_contrast_tesla_cybertruck_and_ford_f150/)

~~~
cameldrv
I think that the market for the Cybertruck is the Burning Man/offroad desert
campout guy. I'm sure Elon is/knows a lot of these guys, since the Mojave is
just over the hills from LA. It's perfect for this application.

It has huge ground clearance, the paint doesn't get screwed up when you scrape
it on some brush, the bed is big enough to hold dirtbikes, and they are easy
to load/unload with the included ramp.

You can sleep in the bed and it's covered, but not like a normal bed cover
that creates a coffin like compartment, or a camper top that doesn't let you
load tall items.

Not having access from the sides is a lot less of an issue than it used to be.
With a new full sized 4x4, only very tall people can reach much in the bed
from the sides anyhow. If you're going to give that up, you might as well go
big and provide huge enclosed cargo volume. The ramp makes it much easier to
just walk into the bed while carrying heavy items rather than loading from the
sides.

------
TBurette
It seems people are commenting on the title of the article and not on what the
article says : it's easy to think someone is stupid when you read about them
making a bad decision in the news.

Classic examples are:

"Hitler was stupid to invade Russia". In fact he needed to conquer oil fields
to keep the ability to wage war andhe Russian army was particularly weak at
that point.

"Kodak was stupid not to sell digital camera". In fact Kodak did develop
digital camera technology. They were behind one of the first commercial
digital camera (The Apple QuickTake), they licensed their patent and were
number one sellers of digital camera in the US at some point.

It's easy to fall into this trap when you only high level information. I think
that when you get more detailed information this effect dissipates. You then
realize that there are many factors and stakeholders.

------
oh_sigh
(2011) is important context here.

~~~
LolWolf
Very. I read the article and was very confused for quite a while until I
realized this.

~~~
klaaz0r
Yes, maybe the title can include the date.

------
chewz
> Any fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about
> people with talent and brains?

Catch-22

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8578531-it-takes-brains-
not...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8578531-it-takes-brains-not-to-make-
money-colonel-cargill-wrote)

------
stevens32
It's really easy to think you have the better answer when you don't even
understand the problem. You're working in a weightless fantasy land while the
actual people involved have to work with the messy, dirty, heavy reality.

------
aeternum
Great ideas can still have poor execution. It seems to me that major the flaws
in the Netflix execution of the Qwikster spinoff was the source of much of the
criticism. Most people lump the idea and execution together.

------
aytekin
This is why when investors replace founders the companies stop innovating.
Obvious ideas don’t have any value. You need deep domain knowledge to see how
things really are, and not how things seem to be.

------
robert_g
Dismissing a successful person but seeming "dumb" person is a benefit to them.
Now, they can continue succeeding with less scrutiny.

For a long time I thought many politicians were "dumb" based on their public
comments, propelled only by their connections. Now, when I look up some
politicians who's spouting objectively false / misleading statements and find
they've graduated a top-tier university _and_ have a JD I realize these are
not intellectually stupid people. They're skilled in their field, have drive,
and less empathy/morals than others.

Now, I watch these "dumb" people more closely.

~~~
krapp
US politicians often act "dumb" because Americans mistrust intellectualism and
"book smarts," but they trust plain-spoken cowboys who shoot from the hip and
speak like common people.

Hillary Clinton attended Wellesley and Yale, and speaks like someone who did,
and many Americans hate her. GWB attended Harvard and Yale, but he played up
the stereotypical Texas country-boy stereotype and fumbled over his words, and
got two terms. Donald Trump went to Wharton business school, but speaks (and
shitposts) at the level of a common Reddit troll, and he was elected in large
part _because_ of that.

You'd think Americans would stop falling for it at some point.

~~~
pessimizer
> Hillary Clinton attended Wellesley and Yale, and speaks like someone who
> did,

Hillary Clinton put on a terrible fake Arkansas accent for the beginning of
her political career, talked about baking pies, and quoted country-western
songs in interviews. The reason she uses her natural accent in her later
career is because she has positioned herself as a "wonk," and often against
Republicans who were doing folksy.

i.e. she's looking for a different set of Americans to "fall for it." Trying
to appeal to an audience who thinks that everybody else is a sucker and
they're the shrewd one.

When she goes to black churches, she puts it on again. Instantly starts
dropping her g's and praising the lord like she would never do in a white
church.

------
jdofaz
I still have and use their disc rental service. I go to dvd.com and it
forwards to dvd.netflix.com where I only rent blu-rays. Maybe they would have
had better luck with a different name.

------
eximius
Risk aversion and capital?

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3305870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3305870)

------
mdoms
If the thesis of this article is that rich successful people can't be stupid
then I disagree. Vehemently.

------
teekert
Yeah, you idiots all want to be rich! I'm really smart and don't want to be
rich, problem solved.

------
acoye
Consider `life` been a nonlinear chaotic process, so causality from been smart
alone cannot be established.

------
dustingetz
Communication; gifted people can struggle to explain what they’re doing to
normies

~~~
robocat
In my experience, the ability to explain is a side effect of being gifted. A
gifted person can simplify complex subjects and concentrate on the important
points, they can find different metaphors that work, or fit their explanation
to your knowledge, and are often self aware enough to understand their own
thought process. The less gifted often struggle to teach.

However “that’s obvious” is also often said intuitively by very smart people,
where they are correct but they can’t actually explain how they know they are
correct.

~~~
dustingetz
Reconcile that with how power concentrates on charisma and relationships
(Politics, Startups, Businessmen). Power is about getting other people to do
things, which is about communication!

------
TopHand
Most of us chose the profession/vocation we practice because that is the
opportunity that presented itself at the time. Very few people set out to be
"rich". What they really want is to be comfortable, and able to pursue
contentment. An anecdote from when I was a young person. A friend was working
very hard to become a plumber. At the time I thought who would want to be a
plumber, it is a gross and dirty job with a limited future. One day I asked
him out of curiosity what he thought a plumber's place was. His reply
surprised me. He said "a plumber's job is to protect the health of the
community." Now that I'm older and reflect back, I can see that being a
plumber is a solid vocation, that is needed by most communities, where a
person can live anywhere they choose. But they don't get "rich". They make a
comfortable living and feel they are contributing to the well being of the
community. Isn't that what most of us really want from life?

------
okareaman
What do you call people like me who is an anti-materialist and believes the
religious impulse that a vow of poverty will make it easier to achieve
enlightenment -- but keeps falling ass backwards into money.

------
Konohamaru
A good thing to keep in mind for avoiding pride.

------
atian
Because at the low level, everyone is an idiot.

------
heavenlyblue
> A lot of “idiotic” things have reasonable explanations

It doesn’t, however - often make them less idiotic.

------
cathames
2011 is the context: a height of the start-up wave, ascendance of FB--
presumably due to "genius". The implication being that if you are really
smarter than others you must have the rewards to show it. Hopefully this would
be received today as a tone-deaf denial of privilege. The great myth of
meritocracy has been blown apart.

~~~
blackoil
Do you really believe Zuckerberg is an idiot? He has successfully navigated
industry shift to mobile. He decisively and swiftly purchased Instagram and
WhatsApp, buying his way into two major upcoming trends. You may think he is
jerk or evil but no way an idiot.

~~~
cathames
"idiotic" was stated by the original post, not my reply. My objection is to
the formulation that massive financial success in tech is proof of genius-
level intellect. Being relatively smart may be necessary, but it is certainly
not sufficient. Connections, opportunity, timing, and greed are other
prerequisites. On the other hand, moral concerns about the negative downstream
effects of your goals--something that a supposed genius would have insight
into--would be inhibitors. As to the purchases you mentioned, I would argue
that the game is a lot easier when you already have hotels on Boardwalk. And I
certainly don't attribute strong imperial instincts as a mark of genius.

------
bitxbit
Wealth = Human Connections.

------
CaptainActuary
Luck. The answer is luck.

------
DecayingOrganic
While I agree with the article, it is important to distinguish the macro from
the micro point of view.

From the micro point of view, a talented individual has a greater a priori
probability to reach a high level of success than a moderately gifted one.

On the other hand, from the macro point of view of the entire society, the
probability to find moderately gifted individuals at the top levels of success
is greater than that of finding there very talented ones, because moderately
gifted people are much more numerous and, with the help of luck, have -
globally - a statistical advantage to reach a great success, in spite of their
lower individual a priori probability.

~~~
Grustaf
I think it's mostly just that intelligence is not terribly important for
success. Tenacity, street smart, charisma, connections, passion are all more
important than IQ.

~~~
xtiansimon
Don’t forget good looks and a rich uncle to bail you out of a jam.

~~~
fao_
Exactly. People on here seem to forget that almost every single rich person
that can be named had hereditary money.

Jeff Bezos now has more money than can be made if an American family earned
63k for 2 million years. He also had parents that gave him a so-called "three
hundred thousand dollar investment" (more money than most people see in a
lifetime even _while_ working hard for their family, dedicating most of their
life to work and barely managing to enjoy life), while ignoring or dodging
every single tax he can get away with.

It's weird how most people are fine with that, because they seem to see
themselves as temporarily embarrassed billionaires, or because they aren't
able to understand the sheer amount of money.

~~~
adventured
> He also had parents that gave him a so-called "three hundred thousand dollar
> investment" (more money than most people see in a lifetime even while
> working hard for their family, dedicating most of their life to work and
> barely managing to enjoy life)

Jeff Bezos also had a teen mother, a biological father that abandoned him, and
a Cuban immigrant father that came to the US alone at 16 with nothing and no
ability to speak English.

After passing through a refugee camp, just six years later Mike Bezos was
raising Jeff as his own and had successfully gone to college.

If - having survived all of that well enough to build a decent life for
himself - Mike could afford to invest into his son's business, then it's a
remarkable accomplishment that should be cheered, rather than attacked.

~~~
johnmarinelli
I don't know much about Jeff Bezos so I try to reserve my judgement about him.
But I am confused - how does one come from a poor family and then receive a
$300k loan from said family?

~~~
danieltillett
The poor family through hard work and saving became a moderately wealthy
family over time.

~~~
johnmarinelli
Sure, I didn't mean to sound like I am stomping on the Dream. What I meant
was, how specifically did this family that came from poverty accumulate $300k?

Quick research says that Mike Bezos worked as an engineer for Exxon after
graduating college, and saving that money wisely can add up to $300k.

~~~
xtiansimon
That does not change the calculus in my mind, because the situation goes
beyond just money. How did the Sr. Bezos land such a well paying job with
Exxon? An engineer position puts him in a privileged class. We have to look
back further generations to see how his family was in such a position to raise
a successful engineer?

Let alone that Sr. should have the knowledge and support he required to manage
his money so well. I look at the Jr. Bezos having a privilege to have a father
who he could turn to for advise, or who may have guided his development. Not
saying he did, cuz I don't know the family, but it sounds like it was a real
possibility. Who saves all that money, only to entrust it to his estranged son
who he don't know or trust--as if he haven't had a hand in imparting the
necessary temperament, sensibility, and wisdom for his son to be successful in
some way in the economy? LOL.

How many people today are fortunate to have grown up in this time, in this is
a period of unprecedented economic growth and social change, who have
squandered their earnings, because they didn't have the support of
knowledgeable and trustworthy parents or family?

Sounds to me like a chain of great decisions, luck or both.

I can give a counter example. I moved to an affluent town on the North Shore
of Long Island, NY. I met a woman in my neighborhood who described to me her
career at the local hospital, as a nurse, for over 20 years. She's African
American, and landed this job in the late 70s early 80s by my calculation. She
benefited by the social changes at the time that accepted African Americans as
nurses in a largely white community. I also met her son, and he struggles with
under-employment in his career. I had the impression she didn't understand why
he was in that situation. She was proud of her success. I imagine it was
difficult for her to reconcile her career in nursing, and her son's struggles.
She had success, why not him? Unlucky, more like it.

Right now--that hospital is part of one of those large health care corporate
systems. If she had this job today, its very possible she would not have seen
her salary increase year after year, nor enjoyed a pension, nor stayed with
the same organization for so long just being a nurse. There will always be new
nurse graduates with more energy with just enough knowledge who are more
manageable by corporate. That's the reality of hospitals and healthcare today,
despite growth in this field.

Fortune goes to the right person who is in the right place at the right time.
And if you frack up and fall out, someone else is ready to take your place,
hey. Who in a great position can say they did it entirely alone? Meag Lottery
winners. haha.

------
tinyhouse
Didn't bother to read the article. Just the comments. My take? The smartest
people I know are the ones who married well and have a great family and social
life. Wealth / education are great but worthless if your personal life is a
mess.

Take Benjamin Netanhau as an example. The guy is very wealthy and successful.
I think he graduated from both Harvard and MIT. (Although one degree might be
an MBA that anyone with money can do). However, he is married to a psycopat
who controls his life and is hated by everyone around them. I don't even want
to talk about his son. Do I want his life? Hell no!

------
jjeaff
I agree with the premise of this article. That armchair quarterbacking is
rarely helpful and usually oversimplified.

But I dislike the common implication in the headline, which is that
intelligence somehow always equates to wealth.

First of all, it's not always easy to judge how wealthy another person is, no
matter their profession or outward appearance.

Secondly, I think we all need to disuade ourselves of the notion that everyone
in the world wants to become wealthy. Plenty of extremely intelligent people
are perfectly happy where they are and are perhaps smarter for not chasing
wealth like all those genius entrepreneurs. Just look at the lives of those we
idolize so much for their success. Do you really want that life? A lot don't.
And there is a good chance people more intelligent than those "successful"
people don't want that life either.

Additionally, I know quite a few wealthy people that are rather dim. But they
were hard workers and an opportunity presented itself because they were at the
right place at the right time and they took advantage of that opportunity and
worked it dry.

~~~
koheripbal
Would you agree that higher intelligence equates to a greater likelihood of
wealth over the long run (lifetime)?

~~~
WJW
As a general trend, yes. But since your life is lived with N=1 and you can't
generally change your innate intelligence, that is not usually relevant to
guide decision making.

------
aasasd
_[perhaps obsolete now that the title 's been changed]_

> the author uses a witty title on an article on business strategy

> the HN poster keeps the title almost verbatim, as is tradition

> people in the thread commence writing about the title instead of the
> article's content

So it goes.

------
baddox
I don’t really understand the point of the article. It seems to be challenging
an assumption that being “smart” has something to do with being financially
successful. But why would we start with that assumption? Why would we conflate
being “intelligent” with being good at making money?

To me, this seems as preposterous as asking “if you’re so smart, why are you
so bad at playing the violin, or why aren’t you a Hollywood movie star, or why
can’t you run a 4 minute mile, or why don’t you have a million Twitter
followers?”

Even if we make the questionable assumption that the very concept of general
intelligence (something like what an IQ test purports to show) is sensible,
why would we assume that it correlates positively with success in any
conceivable discipline?

~~~
mam2
Nah it just means too many people think they are "smart" while not applying
their supposed edge to get any practical thing done better.

Money is just one example. The baseline is "if you are so smart why how come
you don't have a better life", this can be more money, a better job, more time
for your children, a hotter wife for some.

If you don't like the materialistic versions, My personal version of it is "if
you are so smart why are you complaining so much instead of fixing your
problems"..

~~~
rho4
love your personal version

------
axegon_
There is no correlation between being an idiot and being rich. Being rich is
(in most cases) the ability to... Sell yourself, for the lack of a better
expression. And smart people commonly can't sell themselves or their products
because they often solve problems which are far more complex than the ones
ordinary people have. They will spend brutal amounts of resources and efforts
to solve a problem which ordinary people just don't have. Ask any developer
how often have they been in a non-tech circle having a casual conversation and
saying "Wait, you paid how much for someone to do X?"

X usually being the work of two (below) average Joe developers which can be
done in a few weeks. And there you are, sitting and wondering how to build
something big.

Which is another common mistake: people rarely become rich overnight and it's
a gradual process. You are looking at people who are light years ahead of you,
while the route to success is a tight and windy mountain road, full of crests
and dips. Looking at the people standing on the mountain peak isn't productive
and doesn't give you any valuable information. It's those who are one or two
corners ahead of you that you need to be looking at.

~~~
MagnumOpus
> There is no correlation between being an idiot and being rich

Correction: there is actually a rather strong correlation [0].

Of course it is not a perfect correlation and a lot depends on other factors
like luck or hard work. So out of a billion people you can always point to
millions who are outliers.

[0][https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/income-by-afqt-
cop...](https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/income-by-afqt-
copy-w640.png)

------
Bambooly
There is a correlation between intelligent and income but we have been
conditioned to misunderstand what intelligence is. we are taught that
schooling is as sign of intelligence but that is just a sign of Memory and a
sign of formatting. Many people fail because their ideas as are not formatted
correctly or their ability to remember remember during an exam. There are many
people who have failed education and still succeed in their dreams. Elon Musk
is an example where he said "I didn't go to Harvard but all my lawyers did".Is
Musk more intelligent that his lawyers even though he does not have the same
education. So what is intelligence? The issues is also how do you measure
success. May people choose Money as that quantifies things and then we can
compare. The main issue is Quality is not comparable. Neither is Happiness.
Success can only be measured with yourself. because you have to do the things
that need doing to get into the positions to be seen as dumb. The Politician
who says some really dumb thing or the businessman that does not seem to know
what he is doing, have done some really smart things to be in a position to be
dumb.

~~~
knolax
Musk went to an Ivy League...

> While awaiting Canadian documentation, Musk attended the University of
> Pretoria for five months.[51] Once in Canada, Musk entered Queen's
> University in 1989, avoiding mandatory service in the South African
> military.[52] He left in 1992 to study economics and physics at the
> University of Pennsylvania; he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in
> economics and a Bachelor of Science degree in physics.[53][54][failed
> verification]

src:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk)

------
seqizz
Since this is about money, isn't that a bias? I mean what are the chances of
"son of (insert a billionaire name here)" to be rich vs me. TBH I can be
stupid too with that amount of money, since I can _afford_ it.

------
bravoetch
To answer the question posed in the title (and yes, I read the fluffy article)
- luck decides who gets rich.

~~~
dlivingston
I think that’s needlessly reductionist. Read the biographies of people like
Mark Cuban and Richard Branson: both of these men were born entrepreneurs and
salesmen, with Cuban starting his first business at age 12 and Branson at age
16.

A good parallel to this is the music industry, actually: yes, there is a
significant amount of luck in “making it.” But you cannot deny that talent is
one of the strongest predictors: at the very least, talent is the bar to
entry.

~~~
hesk
Looking at examples of successful people is classic survivorship bias. Smart
people who lucked out on their businesses do not get to write biographies.

EDIT: spelling

~~~
blackoil
Being smart may not be sufficient, but seems necessary atleast to make your
own money.

------
Barrin92
Well, the title is easy to answer, even many exceptionally talented people are
never rich, and there's a significant amount of luck involved in being rich.
It's pretty easy to be smarter than many people while never having financial
success, or respect, or an audience or whatever.

It's worth picking up the actual thesis from the article though. If for
example Hastings is rich, does that mean he's not an idiot (or does not often
make idiotic decisions)?

It lowers the chance obviously but on the other hand fame and money is often
fleeting. The average S&P 500 company now lives _fewer than 20 years_. So that
means a lot of people who could be considered to have made good decisions in
the recent past will fuck up in the near future.

The fat tailed nature of tech investing means that someone can make 30 bad
decisions and one good one and be insanely rich. At the end of the day they
often just survived the bad ones, but you'd still have been right in calling
them out on the 29 bad ones.

So I think on a case-by-case basis net-worth is a shoddy indicator.

~~~
solidasparagus
> average S&P 500 company now lives fewer than 20 years

No, the average age of an S&P 500 company is now less than 20 years. Which is
heavily influenced by the rise of technology and the many S&P 500 companies
that were created in the last ~20 years. It does not mean that companies are
dying faster, just that S&P 500 is filled with young companies.

~~~
Barrin92
I don't think that's correct, at least according to this soruce
([https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/why-you-
will...](https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/why-you-will-
probably-live-longer-than-most-big-companies/))

 _" A recent study by McKinsey found that the average life-span of companies
listed in Standard & Poor’s 500 was 61 years in 1958. Today, it is less than
18 years. McKinsey believes that, in 2027, 75% of the companies currently
quoted on the S&P 500 will have disappeared. They will be bought- out, merged,
or will go bankrupt like Enron and Lehman Brothers."_

~~~
solidasparagus
I didn't see any evidence backing up their estimates nor any number that
represent how many former S&P 500 companies go out of business. The studies I
could find listed some of the companies that fell out of the S&P500 and AFAICT
most of them still exist.

I would be careful about taking McKinsey's carefully crafted quotes and
projections at face value. 'Disappeared' is intentionally vague. They also
intentionally use age of a company when talking about the past and tenure on
the S&P500 when talking about the future to make the numbers seem more
dramatic[1]. It's part of their sales pitch - "it's harder than ever to run a
company so you should really hire a consulting company to save you".

[1]
[https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Electri...](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Electric%20Power%20and%20Natural%20Gas/Our%20Insights/Traditional%20company%20new%20businesses%20The%20pairing%20that%20can%20ensure%20an%20incumbents%20survival/Traditional-
company-new-businesses-VF.ashx) (page 4)

------
risyachka
Money an intelligence rarely correlate. I know many very smart people that are
just not interested in creating the business, though they are working on super
complex things just for the sake of science.

Also there are lots of idiots why can become rich. There are so many
opportunities.

So you can be absolutely right saying that some guy is an idiot even if he has
billions.

~~~
tosssingaksla
Depends on what you call "Money"

If you meant income, you are wrong.

If you meant wealth, you are right.

Just do a quick google search with income and IQ correlation. Random first
article: [https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-intelligence-predict-
income](https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-intelligence-predict-income) , don't
even know if it's a good source, but google was showing results for IQ having
a correlation to income, and also for show results saying IQ having no
correlation to wealth.

You own words:

> Though they are working on super complex things just for the sake of science

Those kind of things tend to pay higher that you usual trade job, and are only
available to higher than average IQ. Wealth and Income are very distinct
things.

------
bno1
>When internet commentators see odd behavior that they don't understand, why
do they assume that the most parsimonious explanation is that management must
be a bunch of drooling morons?

I don't think most internet commentators have the patience or even the
interest of painting an accurate picture. Most of them are shitposting.

------
barrenko
"If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you."

------
foobar_
Even thieves can be rich. Even idiots can learn how to steal.

------
AbrahamParangi
Whenever you see someone who you believe to be an idiot succeeding, it usually
means they're really good at the game _and you don 't even understand what the
game is_.

~~~
nsgi
So Trump is really good at the political game, for instance?

~~~
jmeister
Trump is a world-class salesman. And this skill is more about instinct than
cerebral/deep thinking, which is why nerds “just don’t get it”.

Check Scott Adams’ writing on Trump’s persuasion abilities.

~~~
krapp
>Trump is a world-class salesman.

When did Mexico agree to pay for the wall?

~~~
lucozade
He's not world class at selling walls. He's world class at selling Donald
Trump.

~~~
krapp
Unfortunately, selling "walls" (policy) is his actual job.

He's like a vacuum cleaner salesman who can always get his foot in the door,
but can never manage to sell a unit.

~~~
lucozade
Not quite.

He's like a vacuum salesman who promises to give his customers dishwashers and
toasters for free if they buy a vacuum cleaner.

When they buy the vacuum cleaner, it turns out he lied about the other goods
but they still ended up with the vacuum cleaner. But what a lot of people
really wanted was the dishwasher.

I may have pushed the analogy a little too far...

------
jojobas
Should be: > If idiots call everyone else idiots, how come their are not rich?

~~~
aeternum
The author probably is, assuming she bought NFLX.

------
wegs
A much more thoughtful treatment of this problem is "The Dictator's Handbook."
There are three possible explanations:

1) The CEO knows something I don't.

2) The CEO is dumb.

Those are rarely it. The third one is:

3) The CEO is optimizing for personal wealth / fame / success, and there are
political considerations.

Most CEOs can recognize that a business decision can be absolutely the right
thing to do for the business and not make that decision if it either would
cost them (1) their standing with shareholders (2) their annual bonus (3)
their standing with the board (4) their standing with internal constituents.

The key skill CEOs need to be CEOs can be summarized as: "How to become a
CEO." That involves a lot more management of politics than it does business
success (but still a fair measure of both). Furthermore, if a strategy leads
to business success but costs a CEO their job, they cannot take that strategy.

~~~
lazyjones
It blows my mind how people can come here and attempt to write a serious
answer claiming the CEO "rarely" knows something his armchair critic doesn't
(as a basis for their "bad" decision). Then proceed to peddle cliches and
conspiracies.

Also, shareholders aren't stupid, they usually reward CEOs for good business
decisions and so does the board. Sometimes it's unclear what is better long-
term and short-term results are preferred, but nobody knowingly punishes or
fires a CEO for a good decision. That just exists in the imagination of people
whose involvement with business decisions consists of reading Dilbert
cartoons.

~~~
wegs
... to the extent you consider one of the most influential and best-researched
management books a "cliche and conspiracy."

I'll mention I didn't claim that a CEO rarely knows something a critic
doesn't; just that things like the CEO's greater understanding of something
like market dynamics are rarely the basis of what is externally perceived to
be a "bad" decision by an armchair critic. The basis is usually political
dynamics (which most armchair critics have far less insight into than the CEO
-- the information gap is greater).

And as a shareholder, I can say I don't think my intelligence matters very
much in this story. The amount of time and thought I can put into each company
in my portfolio is what matters. That's both especially true because I have
index funds, and why I have index funds.

As a footnote, if you'd like a more extreme take on this, Pfeffer's Power is a
good read (but quite controversial -- the book basically makes the claim that
CEOs are fundamentally psychopaths). Pfeffer is at Stanford.

Dictator's Handbook is considered hardly controversial at all. It's a game-
theoretic argument, backed by pretty good data. The author is at New York
University.

I'll also mention that simply insulting the poster of an argument ("just
exists in the imagination of people whose involvement with business decisions
consists of reading Dilbert cartoons") doesn't strengthen your point. You know
nothing about my background. It just makes you look like you're either a jerk,
or ran out of sound arguments.

~~~
lazyjones
> _Pfeffer 's Power is a good read (but quite controversial -- the book
> basically makes the claim that CEOs are fundamentally psychopaths)._

Can you point me to a summary that makes this claim? Because
[https://www.slideshare.net/johnnemo/power-by-jeffrey-
pfeffer...](https://www.slideshare.net/johnnemo/power-by-jeffrey-pfeffer-key-
takeaways) certainly doesn't.

> _You know nothing about my background. It just makes you look like you 're
> either a jerk, or ran out of sound arguments._

You made 2 appeals to authority - of dubious authenticity - and I have no
reason to assume you wouldn't make a 3rd if you thought it'd give you extra
points. My background is: ex-CEO.

~~~
wegs
No, I can point you to reading the books.

If you're don't read books, I don't think this is a bridge you'll cross. And
I'm sorry you find two respected professors, one at NYU and one at Stanford,
to be of dubious authenticity. I'm not quite sure where to go from there in
the conversation. There are many individuals who find Pfeffer dubious, but de
Mesquita is extremely highly regarded.

I'm not going to share my background on the internet, but ex-CEO doesn't make
you qualified to talk about much of anything. It depends on the organization.
I've virtually never seen these sorts of dynamics at organizations below 100
people, and they don't become universal until around 1000-10,000 people. You
need to reach a certain scale of competition before people start acting in
ways which are game-theoretically optimal. If you have 10 people, it's easy to
keep alignment on mission, vision, community, and business. If you have e.g.
10,000 people, and 1% are gunning for CEO, the only way to get to the top is
to out-gun the other 99. That competition is what leads to these dynamics.

~~~
lazyjones
> _And I 'm sorry you find two respected professors, one at NYU and one at
> Stanford, to be of dubious authenticity._

Obvious straw man. I have no qualms with those professors, just with your
claims about their books, which at least one summary contains no trace of.
Should I read those books merely to verify your claims? I'm not so sure.

> _I 've virtually never seen these sorts of dynamics at organizations below
> 100 people, and they don't become universal until around 1000-10,000 people_

So your initial claims don't apply to CEOs of corporations with less than 1000
people? Moving the goalpost much?

~~~
wegs
Your username suggests you shouldn't read these books. You should skim notes
about these books and write obnoxious posts based on those, claiming the
person you're talking to is lying based on no evidence at all.

Indeed, Dictator's Handbook has a nice summary someone posted in this thread.
Your link wasn't even a summary, but someone's take-home notes for their own
career.

> So your initial claims don't apply to CEOs of corporations with less than
> 1000 people? Moving the goalpost much?

That's where the goalposts started. They haven't moved an inch. The article
was talking about Reed Hastings and Netflix. We were talking about publicly-
traded companies with shareholders. "Power" talks about ... power. CEO of a
5-man shop isn't power. It talks about how people climb to the top of
corporate ladders at big organizations, and the selection mechanism for who
makes CEO. Dictator's Handbook is about big organizations too. It's a game-
theoretic treatment.

Obviously some context went over your head. Maybe that goes with digital
communications, or maybe that goes with not being interested in longer texts,
so much as in skimming summaries.

~~~
lazyjones
> _The article was talking about Reed Hastings and Netflix. We were talking
> about publicly-traded companies with shareholders._

You were writing about "most CEOs". Pardon me for taking you literally and/or
seriously.

> _maybe that goes with not being interested in longer texts, so much as in
> skimming summaries._

I'm very interested in worthwhile texts, just not based on recommendations by
people making obviously false claims on the Internet.

------
econcon
I've many times tried to people make money but they get pretty defensive with
their ideas and dreams and their plans, so I've decided different way, I drop
them hints if I care for them enough and move on.

A lot of people just look at cause Vs effect in a wrong w

------
torstenvl
> _I think we should eliminate the corporate income tax . . . and tax income
> once, when it hits a person._

LOL what? Can't have it both ways, pal.

I've seen this line of thought expressed a few times before, and it strikes me
as disingenuous to hold that a corporation is a person... right up until the
moment that idea puts slightly less money in your pocket.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Corporation tax does have its problems though. In particular it's easy for
globalised companies to shift profits around the world to avoid paying it.

Personally I'd rather we started treating dividends and even capital gains as
normal income and eliminate corporation tax.

------
lazyjones
I love the way people who consider themselves smart rationalize their lack of
success/wealth, including here.

\- I don't want to be wealthy anyway

\- To be wealthy you have to be ruthless and I prefer to be nice

\- smart people are so busy with issues much more important than money

\- wealthy people are just lucky idiots

\- wealthy people are just idiots who are better at exploiting other idiots

\- people who are wealthy spend their lives chasing wealth instead of enjoying
it

It's sad that people refuse to acknowledge that assuming responsibility for
one's own or even their family's lives means to take care of every aspect of
it, including financial issues. If you are "too busy" to take care of your
finances to the best of your abilities, you are incompetent and not in control
of your life.

~~~
mam2
This is so true i don't understand the downvotes

~~~
Traster
It's getting downvoted because it's not a good argument. Accusing the people
you disagree with of coming to their conclusions through motivated reasonsing
neither actually addresses the logical arguments people are making, or gives
the people you're disagreeing with any intellectual credit. It also throws up
some horrendous strawmen - you have to be _rich_ to take care of your family?

Want to have an open conversation with someone you disagree with? I have a
good tip, don't open the conversation by accusing them of being incompetent
and not in control of their own lives.

~~~
mam2
Ok here's the conversation, but the thing is that it's not reeeealy a debate:
"Money is good to have".

But everytime you say exactly this, there are swarms of people trying to
explain to you why it's not so important. It's just pure rationalisation.

That doesn't mean "you should or shouldn't dedicate your life to money because
it will not make you happy", but this specic argument IS the strawman people
give usually everytime you talk about money, and THIS is actually how most
people actually kill the conversation.

~~~
lazyjones
It's not even only money that gets this reaction. Every time somebody shows
off or is lauded for having something that would actually take critics some
effort to achieve, such reactions are common. Whether it's muscles (body
building is ugly, unhealthy, only possible with horrible drugs...), good looks
or many children. People will find some disadvantages and let you know.

