Heartwarming
America is a state of mind
Guy writes Heartbroken about the difference between Portugal and America; Hauke Hillebrant writes about Eurocope. I’m a rich American who’s thought a lot about economics and psychology; it seems worth sharing some unsolicited advice.
Intend to Succeed
It is spiritless to think that you cannot attain to that which you have seen and heard the masters attain. The masters are men. You are also a man. If you think that you will be inferior in doing something, you will be on that road very soon. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo
America has significant blessings, but it is populated by humans. Moreover, they’re not a special race of superhumans; being an American is voluntary, and all sorts of people have chosen it over the centuries. You might not want to move to America physically, but it is entirely in your hands to move to America mentally and spiritually.
America is a city upon a hill; it is not shy about how it operates and why that methodology is superior. You cannot copy all of its blessings, but the strategies are less reliant on natural endowments than one might expect. (After all, no true American would be stopped by incomplete opportunity.)
This isn’t to say that structural factors don’t matter; indeed, you will end up changing some of those structural factors if you follow this plan. But the first and most important step is orienting to it with a solution mindset, that “problems can be solved”, and not an excuse mindset, trying to figure out why the problem is too hard so that you can go back to your newspaper and coffee instead of rolling up your shirtsleeves.
Start with yourself
To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right. — Confucius
In this context, “set our hearts right” is about greed; the healthy variety, that wants more and engages in beneficial trades to get it. Will you personally have a higher income next year than this year? Could it be even higher? Where are you making trades between life satisfaction and income, and does it make sense to shift towards income? Is there a business you could start?
That is to say, it’s one thing to bemoan the degrowth foolishness of your fellows, and another thing to be a shining candle yourself. Are you just doing the academic version of degrowth, or looking for a prestige job instead of trying to get rich?
Once you’re pointed in the right direction, can you drag people with you? Some things you can do just by putting in time or energy—helping people figure out how to get jobs, putting them in contact with the right people to help start businesses, putting together reading groups or classes to share skills. Others require financial resources; sponsoring students to learn productive skills abroad, investing in tools or machinery to produce additional value.
Eventually, this will raise to the level of policy. “I want to build these specific buildings in these specific places,” you might say, “and this specific regulation is stopping it, but these specific officials have the power to relax or remove the regulation.” Jumping to this step makes sense if you’re already a policy specialist, but there is something a bit spiritually suspect about trying to just make it easier for other people to do the hard work of actually making the economy sing, and not trying to do it yourself also. And besides, starting at the bottom leads to success spirals, in a way that attempting to jump to the top of the mountain doesn’t.
Make something people want
The mere fact that someone needs you makes you want to help them. … Another advantage of being good is that it makes other people want to help you. — Paul Graham
Income is about production, not consumption. At the basis of every monetary transaction is someone trading goods or services for someone else’s money—which is the abstraction of “goods or services”, credit redeemable later for goods and services provided by someone else. And so if you want more money—if you want the people around you to have more money—then the most natural, honest, and effective way to get it is to produce more goods and provide more services.
That is, you might know how to get more income by somehow competing for and winning an expensive government sinecure, but that won’t make the country richer. You might know how to give money to your friends, but not how to make them provide you (or others) with more value. Sustainable, healthy wealth comes from you and your friends doing things that make other people better off, and getting paid a reasonable split of the benefits.
Of course, I’m presenting this like it’s simple (and it is) but simple doesn’t mean easy. Marketing and sales are challenging; finding investment opportunities that will return more than they cost is challenging. But a suspicion about the difference between the Portuguese situation and the American situation is that the Americans are trying, in a much more clear way. Trying in Portugal, and leading others in trying, might move the needle.
Make people something wants
Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. — Jim Rohn
The population pyramid is bending the wrong way? Again, the solution is simple: have more children. Again, start with yourself: why aren’t you having children, or having more of them? Solve your problems, and try to solve them in a way that generalizes.
For example, maybe you haven’t found a partner who’s interested in having kids. You could pay a matchmaker to find someone for you specifically, or you could host a speed dating event for people interested in having kids, with the goal that you will find a partner and the happy side effect that other people might find partners as well.
Maybe parenting is too expensive and unpleasant where you are, and there needs to be ways to share the burden. Again, build it for yourself in a way that scales. The speed dating event could double as a babysitting event; parents could drop off their kids for ~2 hours and go to dinner on their own, with some fraction of the turns in the speed dating rotation is watching over / interacting with the community kids.1
Young adults have overinvested in education that doesn’t make them more productive? The solution is simple: pick a specific customer, and become shaped the way that customer needs. This might be something you can do already, or learn on the job. This might require specific training or certification. It probably doesn’t require a yearslong process of exploration and self-discovery.
(Can you not get good X food in Lisbon? Maybe there’s someone who wants to learn how to cook that food in X and then open up a restaurant in Lisbon. They might need your help realizing that this is an option, or seed funds, or your help convincing their parents that this is a wise decision that they should cheerlead. This can also go the other way—a single seed chef or coffeeshop manager or whatever can train up apprentices and staff who can then go create their own elsewhere.)
Gas each other up
Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. — Alexis de Tocqueville
America has a longstanding tradition of regular replenishment of motivation. See Tony Robbins, or before him Norman Vincent Peale, or before him William James. Listening to weekly sermons or attending weekly book clubs helps energize people, and constantly bringing goals to mind spurs action to deliberately achieve them.
The American dream is also broad and expansive. Thomas Jefferson wanted as many people as possible to be ‘yeoman farmers’, self-sufficient rather than dominant or dependent. A dream that you will be holding the whip, or relaxing while other serve you, does not lead to a rich society. You want a situation where you want your friends to succeed, and your friends want you to succeed, and everyone is investing in everyone. The “mutual improvement society” is one of the boring-but-useful pieces of technology here.
So figure out how your motivational loop works, and engage it. Build small skills in the right order; move from success to success. Find people who you can encourage to succeed, and who will encourage you to succeed.
A handful of books I found energizing and edifying:
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Lives of the Engineers by Samuel Smiles
The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Taylor
Out of the Crisis by W Edwards Deming
The Science of Success by Charles Koch
Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
Adapt to your environment
Do what others did on the meta level, not the object level. — Duncan Sabien
The masters of the past were not executing the strategies of their forefathers. I didn’t put Titan, the Rockefeller biography, on my list because one of his secret superpowers was knowledge of accounting; in the 1800s, this was the best ‘data science’ available and unlocked continued growth, but it’s widely adopted today. Deming’s strategies helped transform the economy of Japan—seventy years ago. What succeeds best in 2025 will not be what succeeded best in the 1700s or the 1800s or the 1900s, or even the early parts of the 2000s. When you read thru their accounts of success, figure out the strategy that they were using to choose that action, and employ the strategy, rather than simply repeating the action.
At the same time, novices often fail because they want to learn the exciting new techniques, instead of mastering the fundamentals. In order to push forward the frontier, you must first be on it.
Most heterosexual speed dating events have equal numbers of men and women, and will do something simple like have the men move one table whenever the timer goes. Here you can have different numbers of men and women, and probably want to alternate men and women moving if you want both sexes to participate in childminding; otherwise, just have whichever sex showed up in higher numbers move, either doing a large block of childminding all at once or scattered throughout the rotation to get several small blocks.