Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible.
If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.
Ignore people playing status games.
They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.
-Naval Ravikant
I got many years of exercise on this virtue signalling treadmill.
I was broke and had to spend most of my week working a job i didn’t love in order to scrape by with very little to show for it. I thought people who didn’t have to live like me could only do so by taking advantage of desperate broke people like me.
I was very wrong, and wealth definitely eluded me until i learnt not to despise it.
I spent a little over a year working for a company in the Scooter Industry that gave me the best job i ever had, they took a chance by hiring me to help design products and steer their company in a direction that would align with the emerging market i had experience in. They paid me very well too. Through my own immaturity and inability to compromise (among other things) I blew the opportunity and got myself fired despite their ongoing attempts to make things work for/with me.
Instead of taking blame for my own actions and situation i defaulted to labelling them as money hungry corporate types. Nothing but a bunch of suits exploiting me and my community to line there own pockets. “They only do this for money, that’s all they care about, they are greedy”. I was attacking them in an (unconscious) attempt raise my own status.
When i look back now i couldn’t be wronger. They had created a business by solving a problem, businesses naturally grow when they efficiently solve problems for people, they took these profits and invested it in me - someone who cared deeply about the community they were extracting profits from. They were doing everything right and then some. I just couldn’t see it.
While they weren't faultless in other areas, ultimately I was trying to gain status by attacking those who were doing what I wished I could. I despised wealth because I wanted it but couldn't attain it. There will always be a part of my story that is tarnished by the fact that I attacked good people who didn't deserve it, all in an attempt to make myself look and feel better.
Navalism is best read in the following order:
Seek Wealth, Ignore Status Games, Don't Sell Time, Give At Scale, Long Term Games, Internet Advantage, Compound Interest .. to be continued.