Three Tweets
On the Ultimate Flex, Pronoia vs. Paranoia and of course /wsb
I spend a lot of time on Twitter. Probably an unhealthy amount. But now and then, I hit gold in the feed. Here’s three tweets and some quick thoughts on each across three different but related themes.
1) Freedom
Freedom has been on my mind a lot these past couple years. I exited the corporate world because of this and am still charting my time/location/financial freedom journey.
After 17 years of basking in the comfort of a steady paycheck, the accompanying uncertainty of being on my own has been downright terrifying at times. But to wake up each day (without an alarm) with the freedom to do what I want, create what I want, when I want has truly been a revelation. I’ve never been in better shape mentally, physically or spiritually and am grateful to be able to continue on this path.
The Internet/Information Age has given most people location freedom (the pandemic just accelerated the timeline). Time freedom is next as I also wrote in detail in 'Big Shifts = Big Opportunity (Part 2)'. This is coming in a big way over the next few years in the form of the Creator Economy with millions of individual creators/contractors living in freedom via the Internet.
(This is also something I want to personally invest capital in, as I want to do my part to accelerate it, as well as reap the potentially massive returns - more on this another day).
2) Paradigm Shift
Word of the day - Pronoia.
The 20th century, survival and fight or flight business paradigm is epitomized by the bestselling ‘Only the Paranoid Survive’ on Intel’s journey/playbook to world domination. It served as my product/strategy bible throughout my career as I’d constantly refer to it.
But the business paradigm now has to shift. From fear/survival to create and thrive.
Fear/paranoia has led to many big successes/winners like Intel. But it has also given us a legion of uninspiring companies trying to compete in bloody markets with undifferentiated/uninspired products (each droning on about the same bland vision/mission to create shareholder value with a happy family of employees building the best products). Anything to survive, make a buck.
But worse, it has come with tremendous imbalance, disharmony, waste and destruction to people, customers, communities and the world, simply because such second/third order effects are out of the bounds of comprehension of someone operating in survival mode.
It’s now time for ‘Only the Pronoid Thrive!’ - I or someone is going to write this book some day soon (although admittedly that title needs work).
3) Decentralization
WSB, GameStop and the revenge of the retail investors has been absolutely wild. There was just something deeply satisfying to see the little guy take the fight to Goliath (unless you were a highly leveraged short hedge fund). But something else shifted with it.
It shone a bright light on already incredulous equity valuations (which have long since divorced from reality), manipulation and unfairness in the markets. It made a farce of the whole thing but also just underlined the point that the US stock market may be the world’s biggest casino. Something like 80% of the US market is owned by the wealthiest 10%. So there’s likely manipulation, back room dealing, with the little guy and his/her 401K/RRSP at the mercy of the 1%. And of course, none of this ever gets the SEC’s attention.
WSB is an outcome of deep frustration and dissatisfaction with the status quo. This is Occupy Wall Street with a vengeance. Central banks, central governments and centrally controlled markets are letting the people down, or worse, taking advantage of them. These centrally controlled policies have only continued to widen the wealth gap, and the recent, ridiculous never-ending shutdowns have only further served to ravage small businesses.
Wall Street and the SEC never saw a self-organized army of retail investors coming. This is a much bigger phenomenon. The drumbeat of individual freedom and power has only just begun. It’s going to be deafening soon.
This is why I’m wildly bullish on decentralization and some (emphasis on some) crypto projects (more on this another day too). This is why I’m wildly bearish on centralized bureaucracies like central banks and nation-state governments. This promises to be an entertaining decade.
It’s no coincidence the name of the battleground stock was GameStop. Time for a new game.
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What an excellent post! I find your personal FREEDOM story so inspiring. More power to you, and I look forward to your yet untitled book :)