How to Make Wealth - very interesting article

Kintan Brambhatt (http://www.kintya.com/) brought this well-written Paul Graham article to my attention. It talks about how start-ups are most apt to create "wealth". A brief summary:

• Wealth is what people want - car, a peaceful countryside vacation, house, anything. Money is just what they use as a medium of exchange to move wealth around. There is a relatively fixed amount of Money in the world, but limitless wealth to be created. Hence money is not wealth.
  
• To get rich (wealth-wise), you need to be in a situation with two things: measurement (your performance should be measurable) and leverage (your abilities and actions have a big impact). Any job where you feel safe probably is missing one or the other (or both).
• A small company enables Measurability, and cutting-edge technology enables Leverage. Hence start-ups self-select motivated top performers who want to work hard, as their efforts have distinctly visible impact.
  

A couple comments on the article:

• Wealth vs Money: I'm not completely on board with the statement that wealth is on average created, because there is no way to clearly measure it. For example, how do you measure the increase in wealth due to cell phones versus the decrease in wealth due to increasing cases of life-threatening deceases like cancer (which may be attributable to wireless communication)? How about industrialization and its environmental repercussions? Paul addresses it, but not to my satisfaction - immeasurability is not the same as 'different kind of wealth'. I agree though that Money is just one way to measure Wealth. In fact, Money is the measure of the perception of wealth, and it should be respected in just that capacity. So, if something is worth less money, there's a good chance that its implied wealth creation capability is less - but it is by no means the only factor to consider, as several people could have that 'wealth', which reduces its premium but not necessarily its value. A particular cell phone is just as useful regardless of whether it costs $400 or $100, and regardless of whether there are only 100 such models or 10 million. "Premium", IMHO, is not Wealth but simply a manufactured concept to increase the perception of Wealth. As such, its 'value' is fickle and non-dependable unless delicately managed - which makes this 'value' depend on the individuals managing it rather than on the product itself. Case in point: the iPod?
  
• Measurement and leverage: This is very key: "If you're in a job that feels safe, you are not going to get rich, because if there is no danger there is almost certainly no leverage"
• Uninterruptability: The best technical brains *hate* being interrupted, because they are creating 500hp value that interruptions tend to put a handbrake on. This is easy to forget in management, where you are the one interrupting these folks for reports and metrics. You need to keep in mind that when you do that, "inside their heads a giant house of cards is tottering."
  

We are what we are exposed to

Heads-up: This promises to be a confusing post :)

We are what we read, hear and experience - basically what we are exposed to. We (can) fundamentally change over the course of these experiences. I'm not breaking any new ground by stating this here.

What I wonder is whether we have control over the change that these 'mental impingements' bring in us. We may know what our reaction would be to a news story about children dying of hunger in a small country, but do we know how it will change our way of life? We may have an opinion about the role of individuality in life, but do we know what a particular 3-hour conversation with someone will do to that opinion?

The simple answer: No. The more interesting answer: Mayyyyybe.

What if we had control over this change? What factors influence this process?

Factors in our personal space:

1. Mood - happy, melancholic, ?
   
2. State of mind - peaceful, stressed, ?
3. State of life - stable, in transition, ? (maybe this rolls up into #2)

There's no "right" value to these factors btw. The effect would be different when you are happy vs. brooding and melancholic, but it would still be an effect.

Factors not in our direct control:

1. Style of impingement - book, discussion, experience, ?
   
2. Quality of impingement - Well-written and emotionally rich poetry? Passionate discussion partner? Well-written and connected book? Intense and pure (or uniquely mixed) emotion?

However, is there something in our indirect control, which I for one have not realized yet (similar to the Zeroth law of robotics in a sense)?

Can we control what type of literature we read, people we speak to and experiences we have with the conscious intent of gaining a specific insight into ourselves? I'm not talking about engaging a specific person for a specific reason, or reading a particular book. I'm also not talking about the serendipitous discovery of blogs or chance discourses on topics, that happen seemingly at random. I'm talking about "can I control what I imbibe (not just read) or what I listen to (not just who I talk to), based on what I want to gain from the experience?" Perhaps this is a cyclical dependency: if I could do this, I would already know where I want to go, which is the whole point of the experience.

The simple answer: Yes. I choose to read a particular type of literature and interact with a particular type of people.

The more interesting answer: Sometimes, you may need to not read, not meet, not experience something. Is it important to choose what you do not want to have impinge upon you, as it may change you in ways you don't want? Some criteria for this 'impingement exclusion':

1. You need a deep insight into who you are and what you want to do or be going forward
2. You are relatively easily swayed by others' opinions and thoughts, and have admitted this to yourself.
   
3. You need to be looking for contentment and a path to stable state.
4. "there is something called too much information", where "too much" is highly subjective, based on insights developed in #1.

If these conditions hold, then you are in a position to be swayed from your path to contentment by the passions and dreams of other - your parents, friend, peers, etc. In which case, is it better to consciously follow the "ignorance is bliss" maxim? Is it even possible if you know yourself well?

Btw, this is not an autobiographical analysis ;). I was reading an article on melancholy, and got to thinking about which sort of people would be comfortable with having fits of melancholy if they engender fits of innovation. We've all seen people struggle for peace of mind while continue to do things that put more pressure on them to perform, leading to a vicious cycle. I wonder if ignorance is indeed bliss in the long term for these folks, or whether everyone should strive for melancholy (as defined in that article). I guess I'm wondering if there's an invisible and indiscernible "meritocracy of the melancholy". I don't want to believe there is, and it is perhaps impractical to even discover it (never say never though ;)) - but I wonder.

I said it would be confusing.