When Money Is Abundant, Knowledge Is the Real Wealth (2020)

I had this realization this as well when the multitudes of “I make six figures at Faang Company and turned down fifteen offers” type videos started cropping up on YouTube. In these videos, money serves as a social signal, and it works very well as people love talking and thinking about money and due to all of life’s problems that can be “bought” out of. But the thing is, these videos are now commonplace. Being a six figure engineer, while still an achievement, is not a uncommon phenomenon.

However, when examined with a level head and long term thinking, the set of things money can buy is much much much smaller than where it is useless.

It is in this vast domain that the only currency is knowledge, the only value in truth, the only investment in discovery.

Status is another wealth. Status can open many opportunities that reasonable amounts of money will not. There are other dimensions too: money and knowledge are definitely not alone.

This is exactly why I think people who say that Elon Musk is doing this or that in order to increase his fortune are wrong. The constraints on his “action space” are fundamentally different from those of the people who say these things.